


Between the Stars

by andystarr



Series: Contact [1]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Canon Divergence, Drama, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Intergalactic War, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Y'all know the deal by now, ZaDr, all ur iz faves, break out the blankets and mittens folks bc this burn is slow, dib is canon age in the prologue and mid to late 20s in the rest of the story, tatr, this time with even more baggage/trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:27:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 67,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22117888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andystarr/pseuds/andystarr
Summary: For decades, Irk's dominance over the galaxies has gone untested. Now, a growing power led by a mysterious and revered queen emerges. A trio of Irk's finest are the first tasked with investigating the planet Iapetus, but their mission yields disappointing results. In order to protect their Empire and impress their Tallest, the three irkens -- Zim, Tenn, and Tak -- agree to partner with a reckless young captain who, years ago, had disappeared from the face of the Earth without a trace.
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim), Tak/Tenn (Invader Zim)
Series: Contact [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592014
Comments: 330
Kudos: 422





	1. Prologue: Aaro

**Author's Note:**

> So does anyone remember that episode where Zim and GIR get abducted by those really dumb aliens who think he's a human and try to fuse him with stuff? And then he gets away and there's this throwaway joke at the end where Dib gets abducted right after? Yeah so here's a whole three-part series about that. 
> 
> Not compliant with anything after that episode (including ETF) or any of the unaired episodes. 
> 
> This fic with have a very short smut scene or two, but there will be more adult themes, including smut but also drug use/addiction, violence, etc., throughout the entire series. 
> 
> Enjoy!

“You know that I was hoping that I could leave this star-crossed world behind, but when they cut me open, I guess that changed my mind.” - The Killers

**i.**

The young captain is on the bridge when his navigator picks up a signal from a tiny, unfamiliar ship.

“Sir,” says the navigator, “another vessel is approaching.”

“Let me see it,” the captain says, planting his four hands on his armrests and leaning forward in his seat.

Aaro narrows his eyes as his ship’s external cameras zoom in to inspect the vessel, which appears to be floating, apparently aimless, not far off the starboard side of the bridge. 

The vessel’s exterior changes as they watch, shifting from images of animals from different planets to disappearing completely to looking like just a normal, albeit unrecognizable ship, and he imagines that its cloaking feature must be malfunctioning.

“How many energy rhythms?” he asks.

“One, my Captain,” says the navigator.

“Hail them.” 

“Yes, Captain,” says the communications officer. Aaro watches her attempt to establish a link and then fail. “They are not answering, my Captain,” she says. 

“Override the answer function,” he says, his patience thinning. "I want audio and video." 

“Shall I open the video and audio feeds on our end?” she asks, turning to meet his gaze.

Aaro arches a brow.

“Of course not, sir,” the communications officer answers herself, her face darkening as she turns back around, quickly enough that her silver hair, gathered with a band at the top of her head and falling midway down her back, flings over one shoulder as she moves. “Silly of me to ask. My apologies, my Captain.”

The communications officer does opens the feed, and the entire bridge crew gasps when the image appears of two alien bodies, dripping with blood and slumped over their chairs in the cockpit. Aaro narrows his eyes, then stands and strides forward, his hands clasped in pairs behind him. He stands on the edge of the Captain’s Deck and inspects the carnage.

He doesn’t recognize the two aliens, which tells him that they must be from a part of space that the irkens haven’t conquered. He purses his lips, disappointed to find them dead. Then, he remembers.

“You said there was a life signal?” he asks the navigator.

“Yes, Captain,” says the navigator. “I’m detecting… a carbon-based life form. It is moving erratically in the lower deck of the ship.” 

“I see,” says Aaro. 

He turns to where his second-in-command is watching him from the middle deck, a smile spreading on his face. Aaro returns the smile, grateful for a Number One who always knows what he’s thinking.

“Commander Lobo,” he says, “inform the transport room that we will be bringing a guest on board. Meet me there once you’ve finished.” 

“Of course, my Captain,” says Lobo, his deep voice rumbling, his smile spreading.

Aaro turns to the elevator at the rear of his deck. The door swishes open and he steps through, then turns to face his bridge crew. “Hail Sathana,” he says.

“Hail,” they echo as the door shuts.

Aaro reaches the transport room as his officers are preparing to beam the life form onto his ship. 

“Hail Sathana,” he says as he enters. 

“Hail our Queen,” responds the transport officer, his hands flying across the control panel. “Forgive me, Captain, but I find— I am finding it difficult to transport the alien.”

“And why is that?” 

“It… it is nothing I have seen before. Not like anything I have seen before, sir.” 

Lobo steps into the transport room. “Hail our Queen and Mother,” he greets.

“Hail,” reply Aaro and the officer.

“Commander,” says the officer, “I was explaining to the captain that… well, I fear that transporting the alien may harm it. It does not appear to be like anything we have encountered before.”

“Not of the same species as the two bodies?” asks Lobo.

“No, Commander. This one is carbon-based, and I am not familiar with its genetic makeup. I worry what will happen if we interfere with its code for the purposes of transportation.”

“Beam it up, anyway,” says Aaro. 

“My Captain,” says that officer, looking from Lobo to Aaro. “That may kill it.”

Aaro meets his Commander’s gaze. Lobo arches a brow, his expression almost amused in its disbelief. Aaro turns to look at the transport officer, a lieutenant, older than Aaro by a few years. Aaro sets his jaw.

“Of course, my Captain. My apologies, Captain, initiating the transport procedure now, sir. Right now.” 

“Deploy the barrier, officer,” Aaro adds. “Certainly, we don’t want it going wild and killing us all. If it survives, that is.”

“Yes, my Captain, of course not,” says the officer. “Deploying the barrier and transporting the alien now, Captain.” 

A clear barrier, thin but strong, lowers between the transport deck and the control desk that Aaro and his officers stand behind. 

Then, the room fills with a bright, white light. Then, it fills with screams.

The creature that enters their ship is small — much smaller than the two dead aliens in the ship’s cockpit. It howls as its body reforms in Aaro’s transport room. Then, it looks around, its expression one of terror. Its eyes land on the three iapetuns standing at the control panel, and it begins to babble, speaking in a language Aaro doesn’t understand. 

“The alien appears harmless,” says Lobo. He winces. “Although, quite loud.” 

Aaro watches the alien scream. “Lieutenant, if you will?”

“Of course,” says the transport officer.

Next to Aaro, his officer reaches across the control desk and flips a switch. The desk beeps in a rapid tri-tone, and then the screams take form.

“Please don’t kill me! I’m sorry! I didn’t want to hurt anyone!”

“Hail Sathana, our Queen and Mother,” greets Aaro.

The alien stops screaming.

“W-what?” it asks. “Who?” 

Aaro takes a step closer to inspect the alien. It has a dirty mess of black hair all over its head, some of which is swept up and back in a strange manner. Its skin is almost ghostly pale, although the hue is warmer, browner than an iapetun’s. Its face is blotchy and flushed red. It has only two eyes, one on either side of its face, but they are wide and round, white with brown-rimmed black points that dart around the eye. It also has only one forearm per arm, Aaro notices, as its elbows do not bisect. It has two flappy appendages on the side of its head, near where the hair starts. But, like an iapetun, it has two legs, two feet. It has a similar nose and mouth to what Aaro has, and two thin patches of hair above its eyes. Interesting.

It is in a half-seated, half-standing position, gripping its small leg, which juts away from its body at an unnatural angle. 

“Are you hurt?” Aaro asks.

The alien looks down at where it is holding itself by the knee.

“I-I-I…” it stammers.

Aaro approaches until he is standing at the elevated transport pad, right on the other side of the protective shield. He locks his gaze on the small, shaking alien. It looks pathetic, lying there, clutching its little, broken leg and wailing with fear in Aaro’s presence. He turns to glance at Lobo, who looks as disgusted as Aaro feels. The display of weakness is uncommon on an Iapetun ship, and certainly unwelcome. Aaro decides to question the animal for information and then throw it out the airlock as soon as he can. 

“Raise the barrier, officer. This creature will not harm us.”

“Yes, my Captain.”

Aaro turns back to look at the alien, careful to make his expression blank. Behind him, he hears Lobo draw his phaser. 

“What are you?” Aaro asks.

“I… human,” it says. “I’m human.”

“Human?” asks Aaro. He’d never heard of it. “What kind of human?”

The alien’s eyes turn shiny behind the strange, thin goggles it wears. “A boy.” 

“A boy?” So, a young male. Aaro tilts his head to the side, his curiosity piqued. “And where are you from, boy?” he asks.

“From Earth,” says the boy, and Aaro notices his shaking has intensified.

“And how did you find yourself on a ship with two dead aliens?” he asks. 

The creature begins to shake harder, and his eyes become shinier. “I didn’t want to hurt them! I didn’t— they were—”

Aaro feels his chest practically burst with unexpected excitement. He retains his composure but can’t stop his eyes from widening, his grin from forming. 

“Human boy,” he says, and the creature stops stammering, “do you mean to tell me that you killed those aliens?” 

The boy begins to babble again, saying something about their attempts to experiment on him, the harm they had done to his leg, how he had no choice. Aaro could care less about all that. He bends forward, so he is just above eye level with the human boy.

“And how did you do it, boy?” he asks, leaning forward. “All by yourself?” 

The boys stops his babbling for a moment, frozen. “What?”

“How did you kill them?” Aaro asks, the wide smile still spreading across his face.

The boy shrinks back. “I… I used a weapon I found. A… a blade.” 

“And you stabbed them with it? This blade?” asks Aaro, imagining it.

“Yes,” says the boy. “They were… they were going to kill me, I knew it. They abducted me, and they were flying me farther from Earth every day, and they kept— c-cutting me open, and— and I just—”

“Did you do it while they were in the cockpit?” asks Aaro. “While they had their backs turned?”

The boy nods. Tear spill from his eyes, but Aaro thinks he sees something else there. The boy’s eyes are weeping but hard, his expression shows no sign of regret. “I didn’t want to,” he whispers.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” says Aaro, but a strange joy rips through him as he looks down at the creature. The boy. The murderous human boy. “But, I must say, I am impressed. What is your name, boy?”

The boy stares at him, then visibly swallows. “My name is Dib Membrane.”

Aaro straightens and turns to where the transport officer is staring at him with shock. Lobo, too, looks surprised, although not entirely.

“Commander,” says Aaro. “See that Dib Membrane is delivered to med bay immediately. Once all of his medical needs have been met, he will be staying with me, in my quarters. Have one of the spare rooms made up for him.”

There is a second of pause, but Lobo nods. “Yes, Captain.” 

“C-captain?” comes a voice from behind him. Aaro turns back to Dib Membrane. “Can I please go home?” he asks. “Please, will you take me back to Earth?”

“Hm,” says Aaro thoughtfully. “Perhaps.” 

Dib Membrane’s hopeful expression falls. 

Aaro leans even closer, so his face is just inches from Dib Membrane’s. Dib Membrane whimpers. He’ll learn, soon enough, how lucky he is. Soon, he will see just what lies in store for him, now that Aaro has decided to keep him. 

He’s young yet, and soon his tears will dry. Aaro is an Iapetun ship’s captain, a renowned leader among his people, and soon he'd be an admiral, and then a general. He was one of the first to kneel for his Queen, back then, when he was just an ensign. 

He knows potential when he sees it. 

“But, for now, you will remain on my ship. With me.” 

Dib Membrane shakes where he sits, and more tears course down his soft, round face. Aaro can see it, now. How young Dib Membrane is. And yet, how ruthless, to kill his abductors while their backs were turned. Aaro doesn’t bother stopping his smile. And to think, he was going to throw this little monster out the airlock.

“W-with you?” Dib Membrane asks.

“Yes, boy. With me.”

The boy, shaking so hard he can no longer stay balanced, falls completely to the floor. Aaro offers an arm to help him up. Dib Membrane looks at Aaro’s arm, how it splits into two, and gasps quietly before hesitantly putting his hand in one of Aaro’s.

Five fingers, Aaro notes. Just like him. Perhaps, he thinks, he and Dib Membrane are more alike then they are different.

“F-f-f-for how l-long?” Dib Membrane asks, his eyes trailing from their joined hands to Aaro’s face.

Aaro tilts his head to side and kneels so that his face is just inches from Dib Membrane’s. “For as long as you don’t bore me.”

Dib Membrane's hand is clammy and trembling in Aaro's. Behind him, Lobo laughs. 


	2. Dib the Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Your face is all that hasn't changed. You're reassembled, just like me." - Stars

**i.**

Special Agent Tenn has gotten herself into — and out of — worse trouble. In fact, if you asked her, she’d say that right now, she was in no trouble at all. And, she really wasn’t. Sure, things might have gotten a little dicey since she got captured by the aliens she’d been spying on, and now she was tied to a chair, but… come on. She could get out of a chair.

“ _And then, take a right, so you’re approaching an elevator…_ ” 

She’s been stuck in this room for the better part of an hour, her entire torso bound by some kind of intricate alien rope, her feet dangling above the floor, when the door opened.

She sizes up the alien that walks into the room, taking in their attire. From the research she’d done on the planet Iapetus, Tenn had found out that its people’s military uniforms indicated rank. This one had the standard-issue, form-fitting jacket that clung to the entirety of their body, all the way up their long, thin neck to their square, wide jaw. The black pants and boots, she recognized, were also fairly standard. Iapetuns were not particularly creative when it came to their attire, and they had a distaste for color, though Tenn doesn’t know why. There wasn't much in Irk's databases about this people, given that their home planet was too far from anything to be worth conquering. On top of the jacket, this one wears another layer, a thick, sleeveless coat that lands just at the knee, double-breasted, secured by two buttons. A vice admiral, she notes. Her antennae twitch thoughtfully. She hadn’t expected such a high-ranking interrogator. 

The Iapetun vice admiral glances at Tenn and shoots her a wry smile.

“Hail Sathana,” he says to her, teeth bright against skin that was an ashy grey, like a cloud that might drop rain at any moment, or a dead body. 

Tenn squints an eye. “I hail the Almighty Tallest,” she replies, haughty.

“Not for long, you don’t.”

Tenn just shrugs. No sense arguing. It wasn’t like these aliens were any kind of threat, to her or to Irk. The iapetun crosses the room and sits himself down at a chair across the table from her, and Tenn stares at the top of his head, hairless minus the thick strip of darker grey in the middle of his scalp that he had gathered together into a braid that fell over one shoulder and down to his waist. Tenn narrows her other eye and watches him lean back in the chair.

He’s significantly taller than her, not that Tenn cares. He’s an alien, a lower life form, and his height means nothing to her. On Irk, he would still rank below the tiniest of the leaf-wavers. 

“Will you be interrogating me?” she asks.

“So eager,” says the iapetun with a tut. “But, unfortunately, no. Not my ship, not my interrogation.”

Tenn shrugs again and stares up at the ceiling. She kicks her feet a little, bored. A voice, tinny but understandable, whispers in her antennae. 

“… _blueprints delivered to your PAK, too. Standing by at the transport desk for your signal,_ ” Tak tells her, her voice terse, like it always was when they were on missions.

Tenn sighs and squirms against the restraints. She kicks her legs again, this time a little petulant, annoyed that she’s been on this mission for a few hours now with nothing but her own capture and a few documents that she’d scanned to show for it. She considers her escape plan, closing her eyes and visualizing the layout of the ship. She could give the signal any time and get out of here. But, she still has an objective to complete, and she’s determined to explore more, while she still could.

“ _Your signal word is jelly. Just, uh, in case you forgot_.”

Tenn purses her lips to hide her smile. 

The door slams open again, and Tenn feels herself jump as a bright light beams directly into her eyes.

“Hail Sathana,” said a new voice, this one a little higher in pitch.

“Hail the Queen and Mother,” said the vice admiral.

She hears a set of footsteps approaching and squeezes her eyes shut as her PAK readjusts her ocular implants to the harsh lighting. When she opens her eyes, the light is still bright, but at least she could see around its glare. She can see the two figures waiting behind the light, the iapetun vice admiral to sitting her left and — something else, still standing, to her right.

A bit shorter than the vice admiral, with a slightly bulkier, distinctly non-iapetun frame: broader shoulders, shorter legs, only two arms.

The being has black hair, like she knows an iapetun could, but the hair, shorn on the sides but still fuzzy enough to notice, takes up almost its entire scalp. The creature has only two eyes, where an iapetun would have two sets, one pair of large eyes on either side of the nose and another set of smaller eyes, just below the larger ones. The eyes are different colors — mostly white with brown-lined black circles that stared into her face — not like the vice admiral’s intense, entirely yellow gaze. Tenn squints at the creature. The alien glares back at her, puffing its chest, hands on its hips.

“So,” they say, “what exactly are you doing on my ship?” 

Tenn’s eyes dart down the creature’s form, spotting the coat, which hits just below the hip, the three buttons—

_This_ was the captain?

“Uh,” she says, caught off guard. “Got lost.” 

“ _What are you doing?_ ” she hears, Tak’s tone questioning, no doubt concerned by how unprepared she sounds for the question. 

She ignores it, still thrown off by the strange, alien captain.

“You got lost?” deadpans the captain. “Are you sure you weren’t sneaking onto my ship, looking for intel? Trying to kidnap an officer? Or, I don’t know, planning to kamikaze the whole thing and blow us all to smithereens?” 

Tenn doesn’t know what smithereens are. She blinks a few times. 

Truth be told, she doesn’t actually know _what_ she’d been sent on this mission to learn. Her Tallest had just assigned her the ship and told her to “have fun with it,” and she just figured she was meant to find out whatever she could. 

“That last one seems the most likely, eh, Captain?” asks the vice admiral with a laugh. “You know how irkens are with the explosives.” 

The captain has a mean smile on their face when they retort, “Couldn’t agree more.” 

Tenn has half a mind to prove the two of them right. The captain glares down at her. 

“ _We’re waaaiting! This is boring, Tenn. Let’s go already!_ ” says a new voice in her antennae.

Tenn blinks again. Great. 

She straightens, not missing how the captain’s brows furrow for a second as they stare at each other. 

“You know,” says the vice admiral, turning to look at Tenn and putting a foot up on the table, rocking himself back onto the hind legs of his chair, “this might be the part of the discussion where you ask the irken how she got on your ship in the first place. Sir. _Captain_.”

The captain cuts a look to the vice admiral as his mouth and brow twist downward. “I think I know how to interrogate a prisoner, Lobo,” he sneers. 

“That’s _Vice Admiral_ Lobo to you,” snaps the iapetun — Lobo, Tenn mentally adds.

The captain shoots Lobo another glare before turning back to Tenn. “And how, exactly, did you get onto my ship then, irken?”

Tenn looks between the iapetun and the captain. She’s done with being here. A plan starts to form in her head, but she needs a distraction, in case they're armed. She turns to look at the iapetun.

“I entered through a weakness in the ship’s security system. This ship’s firewalls are outdated, and I was able to use the transport function of my own ship to beam into a room in which my scanner detected no signs of life. From there, I used my energy rhythm scanners to evade other life forms as I perused the ship’s libraries, its office spaces, and its storage rooms.”

She keeps her eyes on the iapetun. “It was actually easier than I thought it’d be, Vice Admiral. This ship’s security seems fairly lax, and there aren’t enough guards for the number of empty spaces where, well, just about anyone could sneak in and do whatever they want.” 

She turns to look at the captain and finds, to her delight, a deeper frown on his face. “In fact, Captain, if I may be so bold, your ship’s security seems awfully uncoordinated, and any attempts to kidnap an officer, even one as high-ranking as the vice admiral, would be… well, fairly straightforward. Easy, even.” 

The captain is fuming. The vice admiral laughs. Tenn takes the opportunity to eject her miniature saw from her PAK and start cutting through the rope.

“Is that so?” the vice admiral asks. “Well, Dib, looks like you won’t even need to _try_ to get rid of me. Your own incompetence can handle it for you!” 

“That’s _Captain_ Dib!” 

The captain — Dib — steps toward her abruptly, approaching her with a growl that’s nearly drowned out the vice admiral’s laughter. 

The captain stomps up to her and seizes her roughly by the jaw. Tenn stares into the alien’s face and pauses the saw, just in time for its motor to die down with the vice admiral’s laughter. The captain leans down and stares right into her face, his own face red and shadowed from the harsh background light.

His eyes are strange, and he has all these extra features on his face that no irken has. He bares a set of blunt, white teeth.

“ _CAN WE GO PLEASE?!_ ”

At that, the captain pauses, and his eyes go wide. Tenn winces at the scream in her antennae, and she knows she’s have to give her associate a talking-to about communicating while on a mission. She could only hope that the captain hadn’t heard, too.

The captain had heard, apparently, if the one raised brow was any indication.

“What was that?”

“What was what?” asks the vice admiral. 

The captain turns Tenn’s face to the left, cranking her neck and inspecting the side of her head. 

“I just heard— ah.”

Tenn holds her breath and feels as the captain unsticks her small, black communicator from the inside of one of the curls of her antenna. 

“What’s this?” asks the captain. He holds the communicator to his ear and stands upright, eyes still on Tenn. “Hello?”

Tenn can kind of hear what’s happening on the other side of the line. More importantly, though, the captain and vice admiral are both distracted by her earpiece. She sets to sawing at the rope again, going at the slowest, quietest setting to avoid detection.

“What’s your name?” asks the captain. Then, after a pause: “Well, Skoodge—”

Tenn snickers. Typical Zim.

“— why don’t you tell me why your little friend here is sneaking onto my ship?” 

Tenn locks eyes with the captain. The second she feels the pressure lift off her chest and arms, she strikes. 

“JELLY!” she shouts. 

She dives at the captain, her metal legs shooting from her PAK and launching her forward and upward so that she lands right on his chest.

She throws the captain to the ground. In his surprise, he drops the little communicator and it goes skittering across the floor. Tenn collects it with a PAK arm as she takes off toward the door.

The vice admiral is shouting behind her, chastising the captain and threatening to call— Tenn can’t hear the name, but it sounds like the word _arrow_. She’s blasting the door off its hinges and escaping down the hall. 

She hears the sounds of a scuffle behind her as she ducks behind a corner and sticks the communicator back to her antenna. 

“Zim?” she whispers.

“ _I’m in position_ ,” says Zim, his voice quick. “ _Beaming you back aboard in 3… 2…_ ”

“Don’t!” she says. “Wait a second!”

“ _What?_ ” 

“We haven’t… we don’t… I haven’t gotten anything yet!”

There’s a pause on the other line as Tenn can practically hear Zim’s thought process. Yes, she hadn’t retrieved much useful information for this mission. Yes, the ship’s crew knew she was here and were probably looking for her. Should she stay and risk capture again? What did the iapetuns know about Irk? Was she a risk if she stayed on board? 

“ _You need to complete the objective for our Tallest_ ,” says Zim finally.

Tenn sighs with relief. “That’s what I hoped you’d say.”

“ _What is the status of the iapetuns who interrogated you? Are you safe to move around?_ ”

Tenn pauses at that. She looks around her corner and sees nothing. She can still hear shouts from down the hall.

“They… aren’t chasing me,” she whispers. “They haven’t triggered an alarm, either.” 

“ _Go investigate_.” 

Tenn obliges, muting her earpiece this time and engaging her PAK legs so she can silently scale the wall and suspend herself from the ceiling. She scurries back down the narrow, brightly-lit hall toward the interrogation room and holds herself just outside the busted door frame and listens. 

“I knew this would happen!” she hears, and it’s the vice admiral, shouting.

“Oh, you _knew_ she’d break out? Really? I don’t want to hear it, Lobo!” the captain snaps back.

“She’s an irken! And _you_ underestimated her!”

“You were here, too!”

“You had no right to be given this ship, do you hear me? You don’t have half the experience Aaro had when she gave it to him—”

“I was doing fine before you got here! I don’t need a babysitter!”

“You obviously do, Dib!”  


“That’s _Captain_ Dib!”

Tenn hears the sound of a punch landing, and then she hears a yelp. She peeks through the doorframe, just enough to see what’s happening.

The captain is hunched over, a hand cupping one eye. The vice admiral stands close to the captain and looks downward, his face twisted in a snarl.

“Get over yourself, kid,” the vice admiral grunts. “As much as you might want to believe it, you’re not your father. You can’t even handle this hunk of junk.” 

Tenn’s brow furrows as she watches the captain straighten. 

“Don’t take it out on me,” the captain pants, “just because I got what you wanted.”

Lobo shoves the captain backward with one hand, and Dib stumbles before he rights himself. He grabs Dib by the jaw, just as Dib had done to Tenn a few moments ago, then spits right in his grimacing face. 

“Shut up,” Lobo grinds out. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dib grunts. “I know you’re sick of being Aaro’s little yes-man,” he growls, wiping the saliva off his face with the back of his other hand. “And I know you only came here so you wouldn’t have to follow him around, doing whatever he tells you—”

The vice admiral roars before pushing the captain backward and slamming him against the wall. He lands another hard punch, this one right in the captain’s abdomen. The captain takes the blow with an _oof_. 

“You don’t deserve this, you know that?” says the vice admiral. “You don’t deserve any of this.”

He punches the captain in the gut again and then turns away. He straightens his shoulders and takes a breath, then stalks through the rubble of the broken door. 

“I guess I’ll catch your prisoner for you, too, then,” he grumbles.

Tenn watches him pull a communication device from his pocket — it’s large and bulky, she notes, not as streamlined as an Irken comm — and bark an order into it. She braces herself. Immediately, a siren blares, followed by an announcement that a dangerous prisoner has escaped and is now roaming about the ship.

Tenn hears footsteps thundering through the halls. She can’t help herself, though, so she silently sneaks herself into the interrogation room once again. She flattens herself to the ceiling and watches the captain.

Dib, she remembers. Dib sits on the floor with his legs splayed in front of him and his back to the wall. Dib gasps for a few moments, clutching the spot where Lobo had just landed his last punch. Dib stares forward, his breathing evening out, then stands. He wobbles and leans against the wall for support, still clutching his abdomen and making pained wheezing sounds.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fucking Lobo.”

The hand holding his abdomen balls into a fist and he punches the metal wall he’s leaning against. 

“ _FUCK_!” he screams, and he punches it again, and again, and he keeps going until Tenn can see little stains of red against the wall. 

She cocks her head to the side as she watches the display, not sure what to think of it, not sure what any of it means. Well, it has nothing to do with her. She doesn’t particularly care about the theatrics of a young captain and his boorish supervisor. She decides to try her hand at finding more information again and is just about to check the hallway for iapetuns when the captain’s eyes meet hers.

There’s a pause.

“ _You_!” Dib shouts.

“Oops.”

Tenn drops to the floor and takes off running. The captain chases after her, but she can hear him wheezing as he struggles to keep up. She rounds a corner and leaves him behind, and then she keeps running as the sirens around her continue to blare and bright strobe lights flicker through the halls. 

She jumps to the ceiling again and hangs there, her body pressed against the cool metal, considering her next move. She turns her earpiece off mute.

“Zim?” she calls.

“ _What is it? Are you done?_ ”

It isn’t Zim this time. It’s Tak again.

“Where’s Zim?”

“ _He was taking over for me for a second while I was checking the faulty core. Where are you? He said you got out. I’ll beam you back to the ship now_.”

“No!” says Tenn. “I’m not ready.”

There’s a pause. Tenn purses her lips.

“ _What could you be waiting for? I hear what’s happening there, Tenn. Let’s get you back on the ship_.” 

“I’m not ready,” Tenn presses. “I don’t have any information yet.”

“ _You sent us scans of the documents. We have personnel files and the blueprints to this ship, as well as a few others in this fleet. What other information, exactly, are you looking for, here_?” 

Tenn huffs, knowing it’s a trick question. “I don’t know, _something_.” 

She can almost hear Tak crossing her arms. “ _Something._ ” 

“This stuff isn’t helpful! Tak, our Tallest—”

“ _They gave you no specific directive, and they clearly weren’t looking for any specific information. We don’t know what’s helpful, because they didn’t tell us. I’m beaming you back to the ship now_.” 

“No!”

Tenn can hear shouting closing in on her, but she doesn’t care. She drops to the floor and starts running again, in any direction, quick enough that she knows Tak won’t be able to pin her down and safely transport her back to their ship. She runs down corridors, dodging and blasting iapetuns as they try to catch her. She tries to remember where the offices were — if she could get something, anything, a computer, a hard drive, a fucking _binder_ , she’d take it at this point. 

She dodges around an enormous iapetun, sliding between his legs and then throwing herself up and to the right to skirt around another one. She lets her PAK legs ricochet her body off the walls of the hallway, avoiding plasma blasts and grabbing hands. She tries to recalibrate, to remember where she is, and then she remembers that Tak had downloaded bluepritns of the ship into her PAK. She opens up the blueprints into a hologram in front of her and grins, thanking Tak mentally while, at the same time, turning her communicator back to mute so she could block out the sound of Tak yelling at her. 

She finds herself in a narrow hallway, no one in front of her and a flood of iapetuns chasing behind her. She sprints down the hallway to the office door at the end, where she knows there must be something in there, anything, and she also knows that the captain, wherever Dib is, is somewhere far behind her, probably still panting and cursing about Lobo.

She finds herself corrected when the office door flies open and the captain is standing right in front of her, one arm still gripping his abdomen, a crazed smile on his face.

“Gotcha!”

She tries to skid to a halt, but she has too much momentum, so she just lets herself fly forward and slam into the captain. He falls backwards into his office with a pained shout and Tenn has about one second to look around before a stupid idea strikes her. She’s irken, though, so it can’t be too stupid, so she screams “JELLY!” into her communication device, grabs Dib by the wrists, and braces herself.

She hears Dib’s startled yelp as the office fills with warm light and then disappears around her. She grips Dib’s wrists as tightly as she can as he screams.

They land with a thud on the floor of the transport room.

“What the—?”

Tenn doesn’t look up, just holds Dib down as well as she can while she shouts, “Computer! Stun the alien!” 

She watches Dib as he screams and struggles against her, but then his eyes go wide and she can see in the reflection of his pupils a light getting brighter and brighter over her shoulder. There’s the sound of a laser discharging, and then the captain slumps back onto the transport pad, unconscious. 

Tenn stands and brushes herself off, then puts her hands on her hips.

“I got a prisoner!” she announces. 

From behind the transport desk, Tak stares, her mouth agape and her eyes wide. 

**ii.**

Dib can hear voices as he slowly drifts back to consciousness. His whole body feels numb, but the feeling slowly returns, starting with his feet. He remembers flashes: Lobo beating the shit out of him, again, the prisoner spying on him and then running away, sprinting to the transport deck so he could beam himself to his office and protect his belongings, getting mowed down by the (surprisingly sturdy) irken—

He pauses as he hears voices. The conversation around him catches his attention.

“What were you thinking?!” whispers one voice.

“Our Tallest said to have fun with it, this seemed like what they meant!”

That was her voice — the one who _Dib_ had taken as a prisoner, last he’d checked. He tries to say something, to groan, at least, but his body is waking up so slowly, all he can do is be limp. He’s realized that he’s upright, though, but he can barely move his legs, and his head is hanging, his chin digging into his chest. He hands and arms are still numb.

Suddenly, his guts hurt like hell. He remembers Lobo’s last hit and furrows his brow. That awakens a searing pain in his eye, and then he remembers that, too. Fucking Lobo. 

“This is ridiculous, Tenn! What are we even going to do with it?”

The other voice talking is a little deeper, but not by much. It has a different accent, one that Dib struggles to follow at first — his training in Irken was extensive, but mostly classroom-based, and some dialects were harder to pick up than others.

“I thought we’d question it, first,” says his prisoner, Tenn. “Then, maybe… I don’t know? Hold it for ransom? Give it to our Tallest?” 

“What do the _Tallest_ want with this smelly creature?” asks the other irken. “They’ll just feed it to the Digestor.”

“That could be fun!” says Tenn, and Dib feels his stomach sink at the thought. “We could probably get good seats for that one.”

He’d heard of the Digestor: an enormous, four-legged creature that the irkens had picked up on some desert planet and forced into captivity. Dib and his people had intercepted television transmissions of it and shaken their heads with frustration at how the poor thing was clearly starved, kept around only for either entertainment or punishment. Realistically, it was both. The two, Dib knows, went hand in hand when it came to the irkens. 

Dib tries to struggle, but he can barely move himself. He’s still numb from the shoulders up, but he can feel something solid against the soles of his feet. He’s standing, he thinks. His blood trickles lethargically through his veins.

“Why send it to the Digestor?” asks the voice with the accent. “Why don’t _we_ just eat it?”

There’s a pause. Dib wants to scream.

“We have to at least question it, first,” says Tenn, and Dib finds himself becoming annoyed by the high pitch of her little, childlike voice. 

Dib’s arms are starting to have feeling again. He pulls feebly at them before he realizes that his wrists are bound together above his head. The knuckles on one of his hands start screaming with pain. He groans.

There’s another pause, and Dib can feel someone approaching him. He tries desperately to open his eyes, and he finds that he can get them almost halfway open. He sees a pair of black-booted feet on the floor in front of him. Four metal spikes appear from above the feet and plant on the ground — PAK legs, he notes — and then the feet disappear. He feels a finger on the underside of his chin, and then his face being tilted up. 

He meets the purple eyes of an invader-sized irken with a head implant and long, curly antennae. The irken’s mouth twists into a frown, and Dib can’t do anything but stare and try to stop the room from spinning. He thinks he might be drooling.

“What are you?” asks the irken. “You’re not an iapetun.” 

Dib’s tongue is thick and shapeless in his mouth, and he resolves to cooperate until he can feel the rest of his body.

“Human,” says Dib, but he’s slurring his words and it comes out more like _hoomuh_. 

The purple-eyed irken squints. 

“ _Hyoomud_?” she repeats, tilting her head to the side.

“ _Huh-yoo-muhn_ ,” Dib tries again. 

“Hmm,” says the irken. “And what is your name, _huh-yoo-muhn_?” 

“Dib,” says Tenn from behind Tak. “His name is Dib. He’s a captain, Tak, he could have information.” 

Dib hears a door swoosh open. He sees, just barely, as Tenn looks off to the side.

The other irken, Tak, is still looking at him.

“Shall we keep you around?” asks Tak. “Or should we throw you out into the cold nothingness of space and watch you die, Dib the _huh-yoo-muhn_?”

“What’s going— Wait. _Human_?” Dib hears, and he can just barely turn his head to watch as a small irken with… _very_ familiar features comes rushing toward him. “ _Dib_?!”

Dib feels his eyes go wide as he stares down at a creature that he’d long thought was either back on Earth or dead. 

“ _Zim_?” 

“Computer!” Zim screams. “ _Stun him_!” 

Everything goes black again. 

**iii.**

Tak watches the human’s body go limp again as the stun ray hits it square in the chest. She turns to Zim.

“You know this alien?” she asks.

“I used to!” Zim throws his hands into the air. “He was supposed to be dead!”

Tenn approaches the creature’s unconscious form. She pokes at its side. “When did it die?” she asks Zim. “Is this a clone of some sort?”

“I don’t know what it is,” Zim grunts. He glares in the human’s direction, then looks back at Tak. “I haven’t seen it in years. Why is it on our ship?”

“Ask her,” says Tak, jutting a thumb toward Tenn.

Tenn, still poking the body, shrugs. “We needed something for our Tallest. Tak and I were thinking we question it for information and then give it to the Tallest to battle the Digestor.”

Tak watches Zim’s face shift into a familiar expression of outraged confusion. 

“Why was he on the Iapetun ship!” he shouts, throwing his hands in the air again.

“I don’t know,” says Tenn. “It was interrogating me. It was the captain.”

“The _captain_?” asks Zim. “ _Why—_?” 

“I said I don’t know.”

“Okay, let’s all calm down for a second,” says Tak, more to Zim than to Tenn. She looks between the two of them. “None of us know why an Iapetun ship has a _huh-yoo-muhn_ for a captain. Nor do we know what to do with it.” She shoots a weary look at the _huh-yoo-muhn_. “I suggest we go somewhere… _else_ , and discuss this before it wakes up again.”

Tenn and Zim look at the body, still limp but moving just a little. They agree, and Tak tells the Computer to alert them when the prisoner is fully conscious.

Tak grabs three cans of soda from the fridge and then meets Tenn and Zim in the cockpit. Zim sets himself back down in the pilot seat and puts them back into hyperspace, then starts navigating them away from the Iapetun fleet. They’d only gone unbothered this long because iapetuns, apparently, have yet to develop sophisticated enough engines to actually get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. Primitive, all of them.

“What else did you get from the offices?” Tak asks. 

Tenn shrugs and reaches into her PAK, then produces some paperwork. She and Tak scan through it together. It really isn’t much.

“Our Tallest will be disappointed with only this,” says Tenn softly. 

“Maybe,” says Tak, just as softly. “Maybe this is exactly what they wanted.”

“Nonsense,” scoffs Zim. “Our Tallest will have wanted much more than that. We must give them the prisoner.”

“We should interrogate the prisoner _ourselves_ , first,” says Tenn. “That way we waste none of our Tallest’s time and resources.”

“And then we give it to our Tallest as a tribute for the Digestor,” Zim adds.

Tak sighs. “What we _need_ to do is get that thing off this ship as soon as possible. Who knows what it will do? What if it’s communicating with its people right now? What if it has a tracking device on it?”

That makes all of them pause. They exchange looks before Zim sets the ship to auto-pilot and they go sprinting back into the transport room. The prisoner is feebly attempting to wake back up as they run up to him.

“Woah— what—”

“What do you have, alien?” asks Tenn. “Are you being monitored?”

The human blinks blearily at Tenn. Tak notices that one of its eyes is sunken in, the skin around it puffy and purple. 

“I… don’t… think so?”

Tak pulls her scanner from her PAK and aims it at the alien’s head. It flinches as a horizontal beam of light emits from the scanner and tracks down its body. The scanner starts beeping when it reaches the pocket of the alien’s coat. 

“Get it!” Tak snaps, and Zim dives forward and yanks a clunky-looking communication device from the Dib’s pocket. 

“Don’t!” begins the _huh-yoo-muhn_ , at the same time that Tenn yells, “Crush it!” and Tak shouts, “Toss it outside!” 

There’s a bit more yelling as Zim holds the communicator high above his head, and then a hush falls over the transport room. 

“Don’t!” Dib shouts again. 

Zim looks between Tenn and Tak before he throws the communicator into the floor, then blasts it with a PAK laser for good measure.

“You _idiot_!” Dib shouts, and Tak looks over to see that it’s thrashing around in its restraints rather pitifully. “I needed that!”

“Why are you even here, Dib-thing!” Zim shouts. “Why are you not on Earth?”

“Why aren’t _you_?” asks Dib, kicking a leg out and nearly hitting Zim.

Tenn steps between them pulls a little ray gun from her PAK. “Don’t shout at him like that!”

Dib thrashes again. “What is going _on_?”

Tak takes a step forward. This has gone on long enough. “Why are you captaining an Iapetun ship, _huh-yoo-muhn_? Why are you not on your home planet? Answer or get shot.”

The alien looks at Tak with a frown, then turns to Zim. “I was abducted,” it says, its eyes meeting Zim’s. “Two aliens abducted me and tried to do experiments on me. I… eventually, I got picked up by the iapetuns. I’ve been with them ever since.” 

Tak watches Zim’s expression shift with confusion. 

“You disappeared,” he said.

“I was kidnapped.”

“It’s been years,” says Zim, his brow drawn. 

The prisoner glares down at Zim through his swollen, purple eye. “Yeah, I guess so. You’re still the size of a kid, though.”

Tenn shoots at the prisoner’s feet without warning. He screams and squirms in his braces, narrowly avoiding the blast.

“Fuck!” the prisoner shouts. “What the hell?” 

Tak’s gaze darts from Tenn to Zim. Tenn looks furious. Zim looks like he’s about to come to a realization.

“These aliens,” he begins, “were they… attempting fusion? With you and… other objects?”

Dib blinks. “Yes.”

“Were they pitifully stupid?”

Dib makes a face, one that Tak can’t understand. “Yes.”

Zim strides right up to their prisoner, looking even more confused. “And you could not escape them?”

“They took off from Earth before I could do anything,” says the Dib softly. “They… had me unconscious, from the moment they captured me until we were nowhere near Earth. I didn’t… I didn’t know where I was, or what was happening, for a long time. They numbed my whole body so I couldn’t even move.”

There’s a pause in the transport room as the irkens absorbed this information. To Tak’s shock, Zim’s expression fell slightly, and he looked almost… sympathetic? That couldn’t be right, though.

“Please,” says the Dib softly, “just let me go back to my ship.”

Zim stares at the prisoner for a while longer. “Your ship?” he asks. “Not Earth?”

Dib looks confused, now, too. “What?”

“Zim.” Tenn takes Zim by the arm, and he turns to look at her. “We need this. For our Tallest.” 

“I…” begins Zim. “He… may be more trouble than he’s worth.”

“I agree,” says Tak. “We should get this thing out of here as soon as possible. I vote we throw it out the airlock.” 

“I’m not a thing,” the Dib spits, and Tenn points her gun at him again. The prisoner glances at her, then at Tak. “I’m not.”

“Whatever,” says Tenn. “The point is, we’re going to interrogate you, and then we’re going to kill you. The more you cooperate, the more painless your death will be.”

“Wait!” says the prisoner. “Come on, there’s gotta… you can’t just do that, please.”

Tenn shakes her head and turns to make a _who does this guy think he is_ face at Tak. Zim takes another step forward, so he’s within kicking distance of the prisoner. It makes Tak uneasy, and she draws her own plasma pistol and points it at the prisoner’s chest.

“What do you propose we do instead?” Zim asks. 

Tenn’s mocking expression turns to one of shock as she and Tak stare at each other. Tak’s fingers toy with the safety of her pistol.

The Dib looks around wildly, like it didn’t expect to be asked for an alternative. Its eyes land on Tenn for a moment. It bites its lip.

“Lobo.”

Tenn’s eyes go wide.

“Who?” asks Tak.

“My vice admiral,” says the Dib softly. “You can have him. Just spare me, and I’ll help you capture him.”

There’s a long silence in the transport room as the irkens consider the unfathomable suggestion.

“You would do that?” Tak asks. “To your own superior officer?”

The Dib takes a shaky breath.

“Yes.”

“And then what?” asks Zim. “What do we do with you after?”

“Return me to my people,” says the Dib.

“To Earth?” presses Zim.

Dib glares at Zim. “No,” he says. “Iapetus.” 

There’s another heavy silence. Tak throws her hands up in disbelief.

“Of course we won’t do that!” she shouts, annoyed that Zim and Tenn were being so quiet. “That would be ridiculous! We aren’t keeping a dangerous alien on our ship just because it promises some insane trade!”

Tenn and Zim are glancing at each other, and Tak already knows she’s lost. Tenn and Zim’s loyalty to the Tallest knows no bounds, and Tak is always the losing vote when their leaders’ interests are at stake.

“Come on,” she pleads. “This is unsafe for all of us. The Tallest—”

“They need the information,” says Tenn. “To capture a vice admiral would be— it would be—”

“Huge,” finishes Zim. 

“Yeah,” agrees Tenn.

“It won’t happen!” presses Tak. “We can’t trust this alien. Why would it do this?”

Zim’s gaze darts over to Tak for a moment, but Tak knows that Zim can’t resist an opportunity to impress his Tallest. She sighs and tries anyway.

“Zim, you know this creature. You know we can’t trust it.”

“You can trust me,” says the alien. 

The irkens look back to where it still hangs from the ceiling. 

“I’ll get you the vice admiral,” the Dib says. “Just spare me and let me go back to Iapetus after.”

Tenn’s eyes are locked on the prisoner’s. “I think he’s telling the truth,” she says.

“Tenn,” Tak begins, but she knows she’s lost. She looks to Zim.

“I…” begins Zim.

“We can’t trust—”

“I think we can,” says Tenn. “We… I think we can.”

“Zim,” says Tak, her voice firm. “We can’t.”

“I… um…” Zim’s gaze darts between Tenn and Tak, and then he looks at the _huh-yoo-muhn_. “Uh…”

“It’s a deal, then,” says Tenn. “You help us capture the vice admiral, and we return you to your ship.”

“Great,” says the prisoner, eyes locked on Tak. “It’s a deal.”

Tak wants to rip her antennae out. She says nothing as Tenn pats down the prisoner and removes his weapons, then commands the Computer to release it from the ceiling, leaving its wrists still in bonds. Her fists clench as Tenn avoids looking at her, avoids speaking to her as she leaves the room and heads for the cockpit.

“Can I lie down somewhere?” asks the Dib, wobbling where it stands. “Those stunners were… a lot.”

“Uh.” Zim still looks like his PAK is struggling through an upgrade. “Yes. I will bring you to a bed.” 

“I’ll come with you,” says Tak quickly, her pistol still drawn. 

“Whatever,” says the Dib. 

The Dib starts walking off toward the door, his body a little hunched and his steps uneven. Zim begins to follow, and Tak reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder.

“I do not trust this _huh-yoo-muhn_ ,” she says.

“Human,” replies Zim.

“What?”

Zim looks at her. “It’s pronounced _human_.” 

Tak isn’t sure what to say, but Zim reaches a hand up to cover hers as it clenches his shoulder. His antenna flicks up to bump against hers, and she realizes that Zim, at least to some degree, is siding with her. But, she knows the influence of the Tallest is no match for her.

“We will keep an eye on him,” Zim murmurs as the Dib pushes through the door and disappears down the corridor.

“Let’s do it, then,” says Tak, and she squeezes Zim’s shoulder one time before following the _human_ out the transport room.

Zim follows behind her, and she thinks that this entire endeavor will surely end in disaster for all of them. 


	3. Risk and Reward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We burned the wick at both end, then tricked ourselves but didn't know.” - Hail the Sun

** i. **

Zim leads the Dib to the medical bay, his hands in fists behind his back. He marches quickly, knowing that the Dib is probably struggling to keep up, even with Tak’s gun digging into his back.

This is a horrible idea. 

The Tallest need intel, though, so they’ll do it. It’ll go fine, Zim tells himself. He and his little crew of special agents have never failed at a mission before, and they aren’t likely to begin now.

He opens the door to their med bay, a small room with a bed and some drawers filled with essentials. They’ve never actually had a need for it and only built it as a precaution, so the Dib-human would be fine using it for as long as he was with them.

“Here,” says Zim, gesturing to the bed.

The Dib slouches forward and sit down on the bed’s edge, then looks at Zim with slightly unfocused eyes.

“What, no pillows? Not even a blanket?”

Zim puts his hands on his hips. “We are not in the hospitality service, worm. And you’re more of a prisoner than a guest. This is what you get.”

“Really? I’m bringing you a vice admiral, and _this_ is what I get?”

Behind Zim, Tak huffs. Zim shakes his head. Even now, years since they’ve last seen each other, the Dib continues to be a spoiled, self-centered little brat.

“Looks like it,” says Tak.

Dib glares over Zim’s shoulder, and Zim just shrugs. “We could just string you back up in the transport room, if you’d like,” he offers.

Dib’s glare transfers to Zim, and Zim almost feels a happy little zing of nostalgia. It’s been some time since he’d gone toe-to-toe with the Dib. This time, he’s even got back up. And, it looks like he’s winning. 

“Will you at least take the cuffs off?” asks the Dib, holding up his bound wrists.

“No,” says Tak, before Zim can. 

Dib frowns, then lays himself down on the bed.

“Fine,” he grumbles. 

Zim watches Dib stare at the ceiling for a second. He knows Tak is probably getting restless to go, but he feels drawn to stay and ask more questions. He hasn’t seen the Dib-monkey in so long, and he can’t help but be curious.

“Where are your ocular enhancements?” he asks, looking at Dib’s bare face.

Dib’s gaze flicks to Zim. “My glasses?”

“Yeah.”

“Got my eyes fixed up. Don’t need ’em anymore.”

“Why is your hairstuff like that?” Zim asks. “All… short on the sides?”

Dib doesn’t answer. He turns his whole head to size up Zim.

“Why aren’t you still on Earth?” Dib asks. “All this time, I thought you were… still trying to conquer it, I guess.”

Zim shrugs. “Got called back for something more important.”

“What was that?”

Zim hesitates. For some reason, he doesn’t really want to tell Dib about the Zeeple Dome.

He’d stayed on Earth for about six months after Dib disappeared. For a while, he was still thinking up schemes to take over the planet. With Dib gone, though, things got stale pretty fast. He managed to take over and then subsequently forget about a couple of little towns. It was pretty easy with no one around to stop him. He’d called his Tallest nearly every hour with updates on his progress, and eventually they’d decided that Zim would be better suited to coming back to Irk. They’d probably missed him, what with how far away he was. 

So, he returned to Irk and had been enrolled in what he was told was specialty training. It ended up being more combat-based than he’d imagined, but it had been helpful, sparring and fighting Irk’s most prized monsters in the Dome for all the Elites to watch. Sure, it was tiring, fighting day in and day out, but it was worth it. His Tallest had assured him repeatedly of how proud they were, how happy they were to have him there.

He’d reconnected with Tenn, an old academy classmate, in the Zeeple Dome — they were partnered together a few times to fight some of the more challenging monsters, and he remembered how much he’d liked her from invader training. She was smart, tactical, and also quite scrappy. 

Eventually, Tak finished her sentence on Dirt and was enrolled in specialty training as well. Their first few times in the Dome together had been rough: Tak had been harboring some resentment for Zim over something he didn’t remember doing, and she was pretty ruthless when she was angry. Still, her anger had eventually softened over time, and the three of them began entering battles together. By the time they were finished with specialty training and ordered off-planet for a new mission, the three of them had become quite close. 

“It’s confidential,” says Zim eventually, smiling at the Dib’s narrowed eyes.

“Oh, really?”

“Mmhmm.” 

Dib rolls his eyes. 

“And you?” asks Zim. “Where have you been, all this time?”

“With the iapetuns,” says Dib. 

“Why?” 

Dib stares back up at the ceiling. “I was found by them after… after those idiots abducted me. I was hurt, and they took care of me. They were willing to let me stay with them, so I did.”

“Really?” asks Zim.

Dib used to pride himself in being Earth’s protector. What happened for him to just… give that up?

“Yeah,” says Dib. “I was taken in by one of them. He raised me.”

“You did not want to go back to Earth? To protect it?”

Dib’s glare is surprisingly hostile when he turns to stare at Zim. “You didn’t want to stay on Earth to invade it?”

Zim shrugs. “My Tallest had other plans for me.”

“Yeah, well,” mutters Dib, looking away. “So did Aaro.” 

There’s an awkward pause, and Zim nearly starts backing out of the medical bay when Dib suddenly sighs.

“So, you guys just… got hired to sneak onto my ship?”

“We’ve been hired to do a number of things,” says Tak, approaching so that she’s next to Zim.

Dib stares at her. “Who are you?” he asks. “I don’t think I got your name.”

“Special Agent Tak,” says Tak sharply. 

“Tak,” Dib repeats. 

“ _Special Agent_ Tak.”

“Cool.” 

The Dib looks like he’s on the verge of falling asleep, even with no blankets or pillows and his hands bound in front of him. Tak approaches him and he only registers it once she’s already in front of him, poking him under the chin with a finger and turning his head to face hers.

“It _is_ cool,” she says. “Do you know what else is cool, _human_?”

Dib just blinks at her.

“What’s cool is that, if you step a single toe out of line while you’re with us, you won’t even have to worry about the Digestor. I’ll chop you up and have you for a snack, myself.”  


Zim watches Dib’s half-shut eyes widen just a little. “Noted.”

Tak straightens. “Good.”

She turns abruptly toward Zim and all but shoves him out of the room. She takes one last look inside at where Dib is still staring at them, then walks out herself. She slaps a hand on the wall next to the doorframe and then swipes her fingers downward. The door whooshes shut. 

“How could you let this happen?” Tak snaps.

“Me?” asks Zim. “It was Tenn’s idea!”

Tak crosses her arms and glares at the door. She puts two fingers on its center and swipes them to the side. An image of the Dib-human, in bed on the other side of the wall, appears. He looks like he’s sleeping, unaware that he’s being watched through the door’s one-way viewing feature. His eyes are closed and his jaw is slack, his head tilted toward them.

“Maybe we should just kill it now,” says Tak thoughtfully. “Tenn will be mad, but she’ll get over it.” She shoots Zim a look. “I don’t think it’s worth the trouble.”

“Any trouble is worthwhile if it’s for the sake of our Tallest,” says Zim.

“Right. Of course.” Tak sighs.

“And when we get the vice admiral, we can give it to our Tallest,” Zim explains, even though he knows Tak already knows. “And then they’ll be so thrilled!”

The more he thinks about it, actually, the better this plan sounds.

“What if they don’t want the vice admiral?” asks Tak, her eyes back on the Dib. 

“They will,” insists Zim, and he feels himself start to get excited. “Obviously, they want information, and who better to supply information than a vice admiral?”

“I don’t know, an admiral?”

“Maybe we’ll get one of those next!”

Tak’s gaze darts to Zim. “I thought you knew this was a bad idea.”

“Well, now that I think about it, our Tallest will be so happy—”

“Right,” interrupts Tak. “Of course.”

There’s a pause. Zim reaches forward to hold Tak gently by the arm. She keeps looking at him, her expression doubtful.

“I understand your fear that we may disappoint our Tallest,” says Zim. “But we’ve never failed at a mission before.”

Tak’s eyes go wide with disbelief. “What are you talking about? We fail _every time_.”

Zim’s hand drops. “No, we don’t.” 

“Yes, we do.”

“Name one time.”

“The time dilator they wanted us to steal from that hermit in the Gamma sector? Those precious stones they wanted us to get from that old mining planet? Kidnapping that fire-breather to bring back to the Dome?”

“We— those were all successful!”

Tak stares at Zim. “No, they weren’t. We didn’t accomplish anything, and we almost died trying. If _this_ —” Tak gestures to the door, where the image of Dib sleeping is still projected “— is our only success, then it’s just because the Tallest gave us zero information on what to bring them, instead of deliberately sending us on suicide missions that we’re lucky enough to get out of alive!”

Zim takes a step back and Tak, at least, looks regretful. “Our Tallest wouldn’t do that.” 

Tak sighs, then leans against the door. “Zim,” she says quietly, “I need you to understand that the Tallest have been treating us like playthings for years.”

“No, they—”

“They sent you to Earth, and they sent me to Dirt! The only one of us who even got a real mission was Tenn, and when she needed backup, they ignored her and left her on Meekrob to die!”

Zim blinks and steps backward. “My Earth mission was real! Just because you were needed on Dirt—”

“ _Needed_?” Tak laughs. “I had as much training as you did, and they didn’t even care enough to let me take the test again after _you_ blew up half the testing planet!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Zim.” Tak puts her hands on Zim’s shoulders. “Tell me you don’t really think that all of that time in the Dome was anything more than us killing ourselves for their entertainment.”

Zim looks into Tak’s face, watching her expression sink into something more and more desperate. His spooch beats hard in his chest, like it always does when Tak challenges him like this. And, why does she? Certainly, Tak can’t believe that their time in the Dome was a waste, or that their Tallest had lied about why they were there. They were all invader-rank agents. They took special assignments, directly from their Tallest. What was Tak talking about?

“It was specialty training,” responds Zim weakly.

Tak’s hands drop from his shoulders.

She doesn’t look at Zim when she offers to stand guard outside the med bay, nor does she look at him when she sends him away to go keep Tenn company in the cockpit. Zim goes, still a little rattled.

He finds Tenn in the cockpit, tapping her feet and humming to herself, one hand holding the yoke and directing them away from the Iapetun fleet. He approaches and drops himself directly in her lap, then leans heavily onto her.

“Is the Dib-alien under surveillance?” asks Tenn, adjusting so that she can fly the ship and keep Zim upright.

“Yes.”

“What is he doing?”

“Sleeping.”

Tenn takes her eyes off the vast expanse of space ahead of them to peek at Zim. 

“Something wrong?”

Zim lets his head rest against Tenn’s shoulder. “Tak thinks this is a bad idea.”

Tenn tuts. “Oh, don’t listen to her. She’s just overly cautious.”

“She thinks the Tallest won’t want the iapetun, and that we’re putting ourselves at risk for no reason.”

Zim half-listens as Tenn explains why, exactly, their Tallest will be thrilled by this new plan to trade in one iapetun official for another, more important one, but his thoughts keep drifting back to Tak’s desperate expression. Tak didn’t always talk like that, but, lately she’d been asking Zim questions that were… challenging. Zim wondered if she was doing the same to Tenn. Tenn probably just ignored her. Should Zim just ignore her? Imagining a world where what Tak said was true was… well, challenging. But, Zim didn’t believe that Tak would lie to him. Perhaps Tak was just confused, and her confusion was confusing Zim. Maybe there had been some miscommunication between her and their Tallest at one point. 

Zim thinks on it, but eventually it just becomes exhausting and he opts, instead, to focus on the sound of Tenn’s breathing, on the steady rhythms of her body that thrummed below him. He’d never realized how calming that was, before he’d met Tenn in the Zeeple Dome. Before then, he’d never been consistently close enough to another irken to rely on the sounds of their blood pumping through their veins.

Tenn yammers on about their Tallest, and how, if they continue to succeed with these missions, they’ll likely be rewarded with seats at the Dome soon. It was the mark of a true Irken Elite to be granted a seat, and even invaders rarely saw such an honor, mostly because they were still soldiers and often on missions where most of them (the inadequate ones, at least) died. Zim thinks back to their days in the Dome, the battles they’d won against huge, alien monsters. They must have been entertaining, Zim reasons. Any life-or-death battle between irkens and giant alien creatures would be. But they certainly weren’t _just_ entertainment, right? Their Tallest wouldn’t throw Zim into a pit of monsters just for kicks, for no benefit to Zim, would they?

Zim wants to interrupt Tenn, but a flashing light on the dashboard catches their attention at the same time.

“The core is down again,” says Tenn.

Zim stands and grumbles. “I thought we fixed that.”

Tenn shrugs, then sends Zim to go take a look.

**ii.**

It takes some trial and error, but Dib manages to open the door between the med bay to the main hallway. He expects there to be at least one irken waiting for him when he gets out, and he’s surprised to see that the hallway is empty. Well. At least all the knocking he’d done a few minutes prior hadn’t just gone ignored, like he’d initially thought.

Dib had woken up sore a few minutes ago. His eye still faintly throbbed, his wrists were irritated by the bindings, his gut hurt when he moved, his knuckles still stung, and his bad knee was stiff under his weight, probably from the awkward way he’d just been sleeping. After finding no recognizable medical supplies in the med bay, he decided to wander the halls until he found someone who might be willing to give him something for his black eye or, at least, show him where he could wash the dried blood off his knuckles.

He looks to the left, and then to the right. He remembers coming from the left, so he heads that way. He has no idea how big this ship is or, really, how many irkens are on it. He saw Zim, plus those two others, but he didn’t know for sure if there was anyone else here. He thinks he remembers talking to an irken named “Skoodge” on Tenn’s communication device, but he’s starting to suspect that it was actually Zim. He hates to think that there might be another irken out there was a voice as screechy and annoying as Zim’s. He follows the hallway until he sees the transport room, then keeps going. 

This whole situation is… annoying. For one thing, the fact that Dib had let a prisoner escape only for her to capture him was frustrating, and definitely something that he’d get reprimanded for when he finally got home. He struggles to blame himself for it, though. As much as he liked to believe that his people were the most technologically-advanced race in the galaxy, they just plain weren’t. Iapetuns hadn’t learned how to track or cloak as well as irkens had. They still knew precious little about irkens and what they were capable of, mostly because any race that ever tried to fight them was subsequently destroyed or enslaved. 

He wasn’t faster than an irken, especially not after getting another “lesson” from Lobo, and he certainly didn’t have a super-advanced, extremely useful computer strapped to his back at all times. So, really, it couldn’t be his fault. If anything, it was Lobo’s fault for distracting him and trying to rile him up when he was in the middle of interrogating a prisoner.

Still, if Dib knew one thing, it was that irkens were getting sloppy. Their last conquest, a mining planet which was alleged to have some kind of fancy crystal deep in its underground, ended up being a bust. Their leaders, the Almighty Tallest, were barely even conquering at this point. Some of the time, they just blew up other planets for fun. Mostly, they were just resting on their victories, or fucking around at one fancy gala or another, flaunting their wealth on intergalactic television for all to see. 

So, maybe the irkens were more powerful than they’d ever been before. But, maybe, this was still the right time to take them down.

Dib finds and elevator and goes down. He continues to wander around, peeking through windows and finding that, yup, he’s still in space, and he can only imagine that he and his little trio of new friends were heading for enemy territory. Great.

Still, it didn’t matter. Irkens were lazy. They had technology because of the control brains, not because of their own ingenuity or talent. They were easy to manipulate, apparently, and also easy to fool. By the end of all of this, Dib would be right back in the Captain’s chair, where his father once sat.

Or, maybe, Dib would be on the flagship, with Aaro, at his right hand. Really, if Dib _were_ to give Lobo up to the irkens, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Lobo was a bully, and he wasn’t particularly smart or strategic. If anything, passing him to the enemy would be better for Iapetus than keeping him with Aaro. Lobo would get fed to that poor, hungry Digestor, and Dib would be in his rightful place, as vice admiral, ready to take over the fleet when Aaro got promoted. 

He discovers a bathroom, or, at least, what he thinks is a bathroom. It’s a room with a sink and a shower, plus what might, arguably, be called a toilet. He has to hunch over to get his hands under the faucet, but he gets it going and methodically washes the dried blood off his hands. It’s a struggle with his wrists still bound, but he takes his time and cleans himself off as best as he can. He looks up at his reflection when he’s finished.

It’s not great. His eye is swollen and purple, and his hair is a mess on top of his head. His cowlick, impossible to control in the best of times, is flopped over in defeat. Dib runs his fingers through his hair and tries to get it in place, but it won’t stay. It’s not like it particularly matters, but Aaro always said that appearances were important, especially when facing the enemy. Dib straightens and brushes at his coat and his pants, making sure there isn’t any lint on the pitch-black fabric. He squares his shoulders and stares at the mirror, which is so low on the wall that it only shows his chest and the very bottom of his chin. He clenches his fists.

Aaro will be furious when he finds out that Dib got caught up in all of this. At least, for now, Dib is safe from his wrath. The only problem was, he isn't safe from that Tak girl, who seems awfully certain that she’ll be having Dib for dinner fairly soon.

Dib leaves the bathroom and keeps wandering, not even sure what he’s looking for until he looks through a window and sees outer space, deep and dark. It’s one of the worst things about being a ship’s captain, how often Dib has to be on the bridge and just stare into that vast, hungry nothingness. It’s terrible. Years ago, Dib might have been excited to imagine what lay out in space, what adventures might be had. Now, he knows better. Living in space isn’t much different from Earth, and there was a reason why Dib used to hate living on Earth.

He turns from the window and keeps walking, his hands dangling limply in front of him. Eventually, he turns a corner and comes upon a larger door. He presses a single finger to the pink triangle in the center of the door and it silently slides open. 

He walks through the doorway to find that he’s in a large room, cavernous compared to the low ceilings and tight spaces that Dib’s wandered through so far. He’s in front of a huge, glass cylinder. The cylinder extends all the way from the top of the room to the bottom, and, inside, Dib sees that it’s lined with thick metal. He’s in the core of the ship, he realizes. This is the power room. 

Dib follows the walkway as it snakes around the cylinder. He peers through its glass panels and squints to get a closer look. He isn’t really sure what he’s looking at, to be honest. The inside of the metal lining of the cylinder is just rows and rows of big circles, some of them glowing with bright, white smiley faces, others flashing red. He keeps walking as he circles the perimeter of the cylinder, looking for some kind of recognizable piece of technology. 

As he walks, he finds himself approaching a voice. He realizes that it’s Tak, and, as he rounds a bend, he sees her standing in front of some sort of control panel, speaking steadily into it.

“The radiation is significantly higher up there, so take a break when you’re done with number twenty-six and we can finish up once your exposure levels are back to normal.”

“ _I don’t need a break_ ,” Dib hears, and he steps closer, then looks back into the cylinder.

He realizes that there’s an irken inside the cylinder, which is apparently some kind of zero-gravity chamber. He watches Zim float upward, then press a hand to one of the bright red, flashing circles. He pulls his hand away and the circle follows, revealing a smaller cylinder that emits a bright green light.

Dib watches.

It looks like one of the energy cores that powered his entire ship, only significantly smaller. Why do the irkens have a miniature power core?

“Fine, then,” says Tak. “And when you burn to ash, how would you like me to present your remains to the Tallest? In an urn? Shot from a confetti canon?”

There’s an _urghhh_ from the speaker that hits Dib with an unexpected wave of recognition — it’s the same sound of annoyance he used to hear, often directed at himself or sometimes at GIR, constantly, that year he and Zim were fighting for Earth. He watches a mechanical limb extend from Zim’s PAK and scan the energy core. Then, another limb stretches close to the bright green light and fires a tiny, concentrated laser at it. 

Dib steps forward to get a closer look as he hears Zim grunt, “ _Okay, fine, coming down in a second._ ”

“Great,” says Tak sarcastically.

Dib’s almost reached her when a sharp-ended metal limb emerges from Tak’s PAK and hooks Dib’s jacket, right next to his neck. She pushes him backward roughly and pins him to the wall.

“Come any closer and I’ll stab you in the neck,” she says without turning around.

“Wha—” Dib chokes. “I wasn’t doing anything!”

“You’ve just wandered in here for the fun of watching ship maintenance?” Tak retorts, eyes still locked on the control panel. “Or you’re going to try to incapacitate me, and then lock Zim in there until he burns alive?” 

“I’m not trying anything,” Dib barks back. “I was just walking around.”

At that moment, a _whooshing_ sound captures Dib and Tak’s attention. They watch Zim, who apparently had made his way to the bottom of the chamber, as he steps into a small glass room. He watches them right back as he steps out of the chamber altogether and makes his way over to them. 

Zim’s face is ashy and grey in some patches, and one of his antennae is smoking. He licks a thumb and forefinger and pinch them together over the smoking spot as he reaches the control panel, which he then hops up onto. Tak types out a quick code and a metal tube snakes out of the control panel and attaches to one of the pink circles on Zim’s PAK. Zim takes a deep breath as the control panel starts to whir.

“Obviously, I’d want the confetti canon,” he drawls, “if something as stupid as a power core could kill _me_.” 

“If Tenn and I weren’t here, you’d kill yourself the first mission you got,” says Tak blithely, “and you’re plenty stupider than a power core.”

Zim sneers at her, then locks eyes with Dib.

“Trying to steal our secrets, eh, Dib-thing? Going to go running to your little alien pig-creatures and their clunky, old, flying trash heaps and tell them how a _real_ ship operates?”

“Well, I don’t think I’d have anything to tell them, since this ship is the _actual_ trash heap!” Dib fires back.

“You’re a trash heap!” Zim shouts, pointing an accusatory finger at Dib.

“You are!”

“Enough!” Tak snaps, her gaze snapping between Dib and Zim. “You two are acting like smeets.” Her PAK leg unsticks itself from the wall and lets Dib go, then pokes him in the shoulder, pushing him in the direction of the door. “Go find someone else to bother, human.”

“Fine,” Dib grumbles.

He heads out, his hands clenched in front of him. _Go find someone else to bother_. No one talked like that to Dib. Hell, these stupid irkens should be throwing themselves at his feet right now for what they think he’ll do for them. They should be begging to let Dib sleep in a real bed, with actual sheets and pillows. Who did Zim think he is, anyway? Does he not understand who Dib is now, the power that Dib has? Zim knows Dib’s the captain of a ship, so why doesn’t he act like it? 

Dib shakes his head. He’d never been particularly fond of Zim, and his suspicions about Zim’s race — that they were probably all like that, crazy and stupid and power-hungry and just plain awful — were confirmed when he finally got to space and learned exactly what Irk had done to the rest of the universe. Aaro had served as a fine teacher, and he regaled Dib with story after story about how cruel the irkens are, how reckless and egotistical. Dib could believe it all, that they were just animals hooked up to machines, just savage beasts who happened, by the law of large numbers, to fall upon some technology that they now use as a crutch for all their imperfections. And, somehow, these monsters were ruling the galaxies. Unbelievable.

It’s with a swell of pride that Dib thinks back to the people he’s helped free from Irk’s colonies. He’d never imagined that he’d be lucky enough to have actual help fighting the likes of Zim, but that was what he got in the form of the Iapetun Intervention Force. Under Aaro’s eye, Dib spent almost every moment of the past — how many? — years training to be a member of his people’s peaceful interventionist military.

They’ve freed dozens of colonies at this point, ones far from Irk, ones that had been abused and depleted until they had nothing left. At Aaro’s command, they destroyed every irken on sight and helped the remaining natives rebuild and become strong again. The first colony they’d saved, the Large Nostril People, is already independent and thriving with the help of the Iapetun ambassadors and soldiers who are helping ensure the continuance of progress. Many of the Large Nostril People’s men were invited to join the Intervention Force as a kind of voluntary payment for Iapetus’s hand in their freedom, and they are in training, now, learning from their Iapetun leaders how to push out the irkens and bring peace to the colonies.

Once Dib got through this whole charade with these tiny, green beasts, he’d personally make sure that Zim, Tenn, and Tak would pay for their disrespect. Especially Zim.

He wanders through the ship a little more and finds that, actually, there almost definitely aren’t any other people aboard. The ship is only three stories high, equipped with the power room, storage spaces, Dib’s new bedroom, a kitchen area, and a small common space that looks like it had some sort of sleeping pod setup. There are only three pods, embedded into the wall, one on top of another and then a third across from the other two. Dib inspects them, noting that the pods don’t have pillows, or sheets, or even anything as soft as the mattress in the med bay. They’re just hard, metal surfaces. 

Dib keeps wandering, back and forth down the hallways, until he stumbles upon the cockpit. He doesn’t go in, just peers through the window in the door at Tenn, who’s alone and driving the ship. 

He could kill her right now, if he wanted to. He could sneak up on her, grab her from behind, and show her that he’s not just come kind of weak alien that she can trick and then steal away. 

He doesn’t want to right now, though. Then he’d have to answer to Tak, and it would be a whole thing. Plus, he’s still a little sore from before, when Lobo — _fucking_ Lobo — had kicked his ass. 

He watches Tenn drive for a little while longer, then slinks back to med bay, where he lies down and stares at the ceiling. He thinks about Earth, and how Zim thinks that Dib would want to go back there. Why would he? Aaro had been right: Earth has none of the opportunities that Aaro could grant him. Earth was just a pile of dirt, too far away from anything for anyone to actually care about. 

Dib wakes up a while later, not really remembering how or when he’d fallen asleep. He tries to stretch and then gets out of bed, then tries to plan what to do next. He’s bored out of his mind and wants to go investigate, so he decides to go find an irken or two and see if he can rile them up. 

Two of them are sitting in the cockpit. Tenn and Tak are seated in the single chair on the lower deck, Tak reclined in Tenn’s lap, twirling Tenn’s lax antenna between her fingers. They turn to stare at him as he walks in.

“Uh,” says Dib. “Hi.”

“What do _you_ want, Earth-creature?” Tenn snaps. 

Dib isn’t sure what to say. “I was bored.” 

The irkens exchange glances, as if deciding whether or not to let Dib stay. Dib frowns, then plops himself down in one of the two seats on the upper deck and crosses his arms. They watch him, antennae pinned.

“So,” he says, “what’s up?” 

There’s a long pause. 

“We are going to get supplies,” says Tak finally.

“Cool,” says Dib.

Another pause.

“What are we doing after?”

Tenn and Tak exchange confused glances. Tak’s hand drops from Tenn’s antennae.

“Well,” says Tenn, “that would depend on _you_ , human. Where will we find this vice admiral to steal?” 

Oh. Right.

“Uh…”

“He doesn’t know!” Tak shouts, leaping from her seat. “He’s tricking us! He has no idea how to—”

“Wait!” interrupts Dib. “Hold on! I can figure it out. Lobo… he’ll probably be going back to Aaro’s ship… he’ll be looking for me, probably… I mean— wait.”

Tenn watches him. “What?”

“I know how to find him.” 

“How?” snarls Tak.

“There’s an Iapetun military station just beyond our part of space—”

“Your… part?” 

“Yeah,” says Dib. “It’s for…”

Dib pauses. Should he really be giving away his people’s military secrets?

Tenn and Tak stare at him. He swallows.

“Lobo will be there.”

“Are you certain?” asks Tak.

“Yes. I can take you to him.” 

Tenn’s gaze flicks to Tak, but Tak keeps her eyes locked on Dib. 

“Okay,” says Tenn. “We’ll go there, after we get supplies.”

“Okay,” says Dib.

It’s awkward again. Dib clenches his fists and stares at his boots. Tak, still glaring at him, falls back onto Tenn’s lap, forcefully enough that Tenn lets out a surprised _oof_. 

He’s about to just get up and leave when Zim wanders into the cockpit and flops into the seat next to Dib. He looks tired and yawns loudly, then sneaks a glance at Dib.

“Dib-creature,” he says. “Your eye is purple.”

Dib blinks. He’d forgotten about that.

“Oh. Yeah. I got punched.”

Zim turns away. “That’s cool.” 

Dib rolls his eyes. 

“Did you have a nice li’l nap, Zimmy?” coos Tak, turning herself around in Tenn’s lap so that she was leaning over the back of the chair. “Feelin’ a li’l better?”

Zim crosses his arms. “Shut up.”  


“I told Tenn about the confetti canon. She's crazy about the idea.”

Tenn squirms from beneath Tak, pushing away from the shoulder that Tak had just shoved into her face. “I am not!”

“Well, it’s the best option if Zim insists on floating around in that poison chamber without taking a rest,” quips Tak.

Zim bristles. “I can leave the whole thing alone, if you’d prefer? Let the whole ship explode, instead? Then we can _all_ be confetti. Is that what you want, Tak?” 

“Where’d you guys get this ship, anyway?” Dib buts in, thinking back to the weird power chamber he’d watched Zim work on. “Something your leaders gave you? Standard-issue type of thing?” 

Another short pause, the irkens clearly deliberating over whether or not to engage.

“No,” says Tenn.

“It is bespoke,” says Zim haughtily, his arms crossing tighter. 

“We made it out of garbage parts,” adds Tak. 

Dib looks to Zim for confirmation. 

“Antiques,” Zim corrects, looking away.

“Antiques that the Tallest threw away,” says Tak with a grin.

“Shut up, Tak!” Zim barks.

“Make me!”

In an instant, Zim and Tak are at each other’s throats. Tak leaps from her perch on Tenn’s lap at the same time that Zim dives for her, and they roll around the floor, throwing punches and insults, biting and scratching and snarling at each other. 

Dib can only watch in shock as they wrestle, the fighting getting more and more brutal as they go. He sees Tenn turn around and go back to driving the ship, apparently unbothered by Tak and Zim’s hissing, screeching, shouting tussle. 

Dib’s shock melts into disgust. Tak and Zim, he notes, are prefect examples of irkens: needlessly violent, hotheaded, and stupid. He watches them throw each other against the windshield, blast each other with PAK lasers, diving and dodging and landing hard, loud blows.

He’ll easily be able to trick Zim and the other two. If he plans ahead and doesn’t get caught in the line of fire between Zim and Tak, he can get everything he wants.

Aaro won’t be thrilled that Dib had gotten himself captured by these idiots. But, Dib could spin this. He could deliver the irkens right to the Iapetuns: the military base on Boodie Nen is Lobo’s center of operation, and he’ll most likely be there, sending out search parties and trying to track down Dib. If Dib could somehow contact Aaro, let them be prepared, they could ambush the irkens, capture all three of them, and ship them off to the nearest lab to dissect. Irken PAKs are nearly impossible to come by, and if Dib can deliver three to the iapetuns, three perfectly-functioning PAKs that they can research, maybe even replicate—

Or, Dib could let this whole thing play out. He could pass Lobo to the irkens. It wouldn’t be as good as the PAKs, sure, but… with Lobo gone, and Dib in his position, the iapetuns would have a much better chance of taking over more colonies, becoming stronger—

Or.

Dib thinks about what Zim had said earlier, about going back to Earth. What if they just… dropped him off? Dib could help them capture Lobo, like they’d agreed, and then… well, no. He can’t trust them to take him to Earth after he delivers on his end of the deal, even if that’s what Zim thinks Dib wants. Plus, it’s not like… it’s isn’t as if Dib spends all of his days thinking about how much he misses Earth. What would he be doing if he were back there, anyway? Working for his dad? Fighting with his sister? Being rejected by his peers?

No, this is better. The opportunities, the power. He can have whatever he wants, as long as he sticks close by Aaro and doesn’t fall out of line. His life off Earth has been incredible — he’s seen more than he could have ever hoped to see when he was just a kid, dreaming of the stars. He’s learned so much from Aaro, and he should just… he should just stop thinking of Earth. He should be more grateful for what Aaro’s given him.

Dib covers his head and ducks a PAK laser. He sighs and watches his two new roommates fight over— what was it again? He can’t even remember. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if any of you play jackbox games and have played zeeple dome you know what I'm referencing, it's the best and the first time i played it i instantly thought "this is very irken"


	4. Swimming Upstream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Think about the old days, what we didn't do to survive. Do we get better with time? Tell me I'm wrong. I'm looking to your old ways. We follow the same dotted line, passing like ships in the night.” - Cold War Kids

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im still alive. bon appetit

**i.**

_The door slides open and he marches through, fists balled at his sides, his strides purposeful and precise. There’s a staircase in front of him, and he marches up it, so he’s at eye level with the irkens in the front row, so the entirety of the audience in the colossal Dome can see him. He looks forward, watching his Tallest. They don’t always come to his battles, so it’s nice and a little unnerving to see them there, waving at him, giant grins on their faces, their seats just above the door all the way on the other side of the arena. The countdown clock starts at ten, and he struggles to keep from shaking. He doesn’t know what to do with his empty hands. Every other time, he’s been given a weapon to fight with._

_Not this time. This time, he has no weapons, no PAK, and no armor — not even a helmet. He raises his two shaking fists and steps into a battle stance._

_The countdown reaches zero._

_The door on the other side of the arena slides open._

Zim lurches upright with a gasp. Almost instantaneously, there’s a knock on the door of his sleeping pod. He slides it open and Tak is there. She’s used to this arrangement by now. She’s seen all of this before.

“Another dream?” she asks.

Zim’s still gulping for air, but he nods.

“The cancri?” she whispers.

Zim nods again, and Tak’s eyes narrow.

She watches him for a moment, no doubt thinking back to the day in the Dome when Zim had been assigned the most powerful, terrifying monster that Irk had ever captured. Even Zim would admit that he was scared to find the assignment posted on the bulletin that morning. Usually, irkens who were assigned the cancri were assigned in groups and given specialized weapons. That day, the cancri was listed as the first monster of the morning, and Zim’s name was next to it, alone.

It was far worse that he could ever have imagined. 

The cancri was almost too big for the Dome itself, and it was fast and brutal and it came at Zim so rapidly that he barely had a chance to move before it surrounded him. His PAK legs and weapons had been disabled for the fight. He’d explained it all to Tak, but not until long after the fight. Months after the cancri defeated him, he told her how its pinchers held his mouth open and how it vomited its venom down his throat. It choked him from the inside, sending shocks through his body so cold that his blood felt frozen in his veins. He’d died instantly, only to get rebooted and sent back underground so that he could recuperate and prepare for another battle that afternoon. 

He barely remembers dying, and he’s fairly certain that his PAK blocked out the memory, but the sight of the cancri charging at him — it haunts him. 

Tak and Tenn had watched the fight on television from below ground. Apparently, it hadn’t even been interesting. Zim had no weapon, no PAK, nothing. He’d been alone, standing there with only his own two fists, and he’d been killed immediately. They said that the crowd barely even cheered, just applauded a little and waited for the next champion to enter the arena, clearly hoping that the next fight would be more compelling. But his Tallest, Tenn had noted with a smile, had cheered his name as the guards dragged his body from the arena. So, it had all been worth it.

Zim’s hands tremble now as he stares at Tak. She swallows.

“It isn’t a coincidence that they assigned you the cancri after that enforcer found you in that closet—”

“Not now, Tak,” begs Zim softly. 

“But, Zim, if you would just think about it, for one moment—”

“Please.”

He doesn’t want to hear Tak’s theories about how the cancri was Zim’s punishment because he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. Tak thinks everything is a punishment. He doesn’t understand how she could live like that. 

Tak pauses for a second, and then she just nods and climbs into Zim’s pod and lies on her back so that he can flop on top of her and hold his antennae to her skin, listening for the rhythms of her body to sing him back to sleep. She takes deep, slow breaths, and, eventually, Zim’s breathing evens out to match hers. He falls asleep while she idly pets at his antennae until they’re lax enough that she can twirl one around her finger.

**ii.**

Tak stands by Tenn on the lower deck of the cockpit, Tenn’s hand hovering over the “call” button. 

“Are you ready?” asks Tak. 

“Obviously,” whispers Tenn. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Tak just shrugs. After a while, Tenn’s palm is still poised over the call button. Tak grabs her wrist and shoves it forward, jamming her hand into the button.

“Tak!” Tenn hisses. “Ow!”

The chat screen darkens over the windshield. The Tallest appear.

“Greetings, my Tallest,” say Tak and Tenn in unison, bowing their heads and thumping their right fists to their chests in salute. 

Tak forces her antennae to relax and wiggle around. An embarrassing display, if you ask her.

The Tallest are on a couch in the middle of the Massive’s bridge, both reclining and munching on snacks. Several table-headed service drones and leaf-wavers hover by them.

“Oh,” says Tallest Purple. “Hi.”

“My Tallest,” says Tenn. “I hope this message finds you well. You both look quite tall and, um, healthy, today.”

“Thanks,” says Tallest Red with a sneer. “What do you want? We haven’t picked a new mission for you yet.”

Every time they call, the Tallest are less and less excited to see them. It makes Tak’s skin crawl to think of what they’ll do when they finally tire of her, Tenn, and Zim. 

“We are calling with a report on the previous mission,” says Tak.

She casts a glance at Tenn, who fidgets.

“Um, yes,” says Tenn, eyes on Tak. “We, um, well, _I_ , uh, with the help of my team—”

“Will you get on with it?” snaps Tallest Purple.

Tak holds her tongue.

“I was able to infiltrate the Iapetun ship,” says Tenn. “I sent the documents that I scanned to the appropriate intelligence officers. And, uh, also… I brought something back.”

“What?” asks Tallest Purple, leaning forward. “Like, a weapon?” 

“Not quite, my Tallest,” says Tenn, puffing her chest out in a way that makes Tak oddly proud. “An iapetun.” 

Tallest Red frowns. “What?” 

“Well, it’s not— it’s not _exactly_ Iapetun,” says Tenn. “But, it is an alien whom the iapetuns apparently adopted. It is a human named Dib. It was the captain of the ship.”

“Huh,” says Tallest Purple. “And… why, exactly, did you take it?” 

“I kidnapped it for you, my Tallest,” says Tenn. “The human is the captain of an Iapetun ship, and it has promised us its vice admiral. Once we have the vice admiral, we will present it to you, for, um, questioning. And, perhaps, to take to the Dome.”

The Tallest exchange glances. No one says anything for a while. Tenn’s hand suddenly grips Tak’s under the dashboard, where the Tallest can’t see.

“My Tallest?” asks Tak, squeezing back. “Does this please you?”

The Tallest turn to look at Tak. 

“Uh,” says Tallest Red. “Sure.”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Tallest Purple. “Whatever.”

“Excellent!” Tenn shouts, loud and desperate, painful to Tak’s antennae. “It is a pleasure serving you, my Tallest!”

“Okay,” says Tallest Red. “Bye, now.”

“Goodbye, my Tallest!” Tenn exclaims, saluting once again.

There’s an uncomfortable pause.

“Goodbye, Agent Tak,” says Tallest Purple, and Tak looks from Tenn to the screen to see both Tallest staring her down.

“Um,” she says. “Goodbye, my Tallest.” 

She salutes, antennae wiggling.

Tallest Red motions to someone offscreen, and the call abruptly ends.

“That was… that was good!” Tenn says, her hand still holding Tak’s in a death grip. “They seemed pleased!”

Tak feels her spooch drop at Tenn’s hopeful expression. “They did,” she says. “It was a good idea to kidnap the captain.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” says Tenn. “It was a good idea. A great idea!”

Tak can only nod, her fears creeping up again. But, she can’t say anything. Not when Tenn is like this. 

“The Tallest do favor you,” says Tenn after a moment. “They speak to you directly, by your name, every time we call them.”

“Yeah,” says Tak weakly.

She wouldn’t call it favoritism. If anything, she’d call it intimidation. She knows that she can’t hide her true feelings — it’s always been one of her weaknesses as a soldier, an agent. Tenn and Zim know everything Tak feels, and Tak can barely suppress her emotions, her thoughts. She suspects that the Tallest can sense her doubts. They only refer to her by name, because they know she has to respond, has to bow, has to use titles. She knows they know that she questions them. She knows that it probably makes them angry.

She tries to appease them, if not for her sake, then for Tenn and Zim’s. They always suffer when she angers the Tallest, getting the hardest missions and most dangerous assignments. Sometimes, she wonders if the point of this partnership with Zim and Tenn is to torture all three of them, or, really, just her. 

**iii.**

They take the Dib along with them on the supply run. 

Tak doesn’t trust that he’ll behave himself if he stays alone on the ship, and Zim refuses to wait behind and keep an eye on him because, apparently, Tak and Tenn can’t be trusted to pick up the right sodas. 

They must look like quite a sight: the infamous Invader Zim, banging through the door of the store and demanding to know where the sweets were, followed by Tenn, followed by Tak, who was dragging a leashed, bound alien behind her that was as tall as a Taller.

To her credit, the grocery drone behind the counter points Zim to the second aisle after only a moment of hesitation, and Zim struts off, his hands tucked behind his back and his legs kicking out like they were still in academy and practicing their marching form.

Their supply run, so far, had been fairly straightforward. They’d powered up the ship, knowing full well that at least one of the energy cores would fail before they even took off. They’d refilled the water tanks, because humans, like most other species that weren’t as advanced as irkens, needed to use the toilet and the sink multiple times a day, and they needed to actually _drink_ water fairly often. This one also apparently had to bathe, but it hadn’t yet, and it was starting to reek.

“Get cleansing chalk, Zim,” Tenn calls. 

“Busy getting snacks, sorry!” Zim shouts back.

Tak just shakes her head and gestures to Tenn to grab a shopping cart. Tenn heads to the aisle with the bathing materials in it, and Tak follows, yanking the human along as she goes.

“Ow!” snaps the Dib. “I was coming along, you didn’t have to do that.” 

Tak just tuts, then grabs some chalk and tosses it over Tenn’s shoulder and into the cart.

“You should be grateful we didn’t tie you up outside,” she says. 

The comment makes Tenn giggle, and she turns to lock eyes with Tak, who grins back.

“I’m not some stupid animal,” the human growls. “The fact that you have me on a leash right now is _beyond_ humiliating.”

“Can’t exactly trust you to behave yourself, though, can we?” quips Tak, giving the leash another yank. “Ooh, get more of that stuff,” she adds, pointing to a nice-smelling antennae lotion. 

Tenn tosses the lotion into the cart. The Dib groans.

“And what, exactly, did I do to make myself so untrustworthy?”

“Besides lock up Tenn and interrogate her?”

“I only did that because _she_ snuck on to _my ship_ —”

Tenn hears more than sees Tak give another, harder yank on the leash, forcing the human to lurch forward. He chokes a little and curses at Tak. Tak ignores him.

“I’m a fucking captain,” Dib wheezes. “I have a crew.”

“Not around these parts, you don’t,” Tak replies. “Here, you’re just an alien in a collar.”

“And handcuffs,” Tenn adds.

“And handcuffs,” Tak confirms.

The Dib scowls, and Tenn and Tak just ignore him, grabbing things off the shelves as they go and tossing them into the cart.

Zim appears a few minutes later, his arms filled with his favorite dipping candy. 

“I got all the ones they had,” he says. 

He dumps them all in the cart. 

“We’re not getting all of this,” says Tenn with a frown. “You don’t have room on your shelf. Take some back.”

Zim looks from the cart to Tenn, then back to the cart. “We have room.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do.”

“ _No_ , we don’t.”

“Tenn—!”

“Take some back.”

“Fine!”

Zim grabs a single package from the pile that he’d dumped into the cart and storms past Tenn with it. As he often does, he hands it off to Tak, who will toss it back into the cart the next time she thinks Tenn isn’t looking.

It means they’ll have to sacrifice shelf space for some of Tak’s favorite snacks, but Tak had given that up long ago to Zim. Tenn would have to tease her about it later. 

They finish the supply run fairly easily, if one doesn’t count the somewhat heated discussion between Tak and Zim on what kind of soda to get, plus numerous complaints from the human that his collar was too tight and was making it hard to breathe. It seemed more like the human was just making a fuss for no reason, though, so the irkens continued to ignore him, which made him angrier. Eventually, in order to avoid creating a scene, Tenn agreed to grab some topical healing powder for the human and his nasty, bruised eye, as well as some anti-inflammatories for his stiff, malfunctioning right knee.

“What happened?” Zim asks as they approach the checkout counter. “You didn’t walk funny before.”

The Dib glares at Zim as he answers. “Well, last time you saw me, a couple of crazy aliens hadn’t cut me open in a bunch of places and then forgotten how to put me back together.”

Zim just stares at Dib for a moment, and Dib looks away. “I had to get my knee replaced when the iapetuns found me.” 

“The replacement clearly isn’t taking,” says Zim, his eyes darting to the Dib’s knee.

“Yeah, well, it’s like the fifth one I’ve had, so I don’t really know what the fucking problem is.” 

Tenn watches from behind the shopping cart as Zim almost offers to help. It’s strange, watching Zim interact with the Dib-human. After he came onboard, Zim almost seemed like he didn’t know what to do with him — be angry with him, or hate him, or feel sorry for him. Tenn suspects that he feels all three things. Knowing Zim, having more than one feeling on a topic was probably quite confusing and frustrating for him. 

“He’s not as fun to fight with,” Zim had said earlier that day.

“What do you mean?” Tenn had asked.

“I don’t know,” said Zim. “He’s just different.”

“You’re probably different, too,” Tak had said.

“No, I’m not.” 

“I’m sure you are.”

“Tenn, am I?”

Tenn didn’t really think so. But she’d never really thought about it. 

They finish their supply run without issue and return to the ship. Tak sends the human to med bay, and he goes, complaining the whole time. They stock their respective shelves with the snacks they’d procured, Zim’s shelf nearly overflowing with dipping candy, Tak’s about half-filled with her own things, half-filled with Zim’s, Tenn’s mostly filled with her own but also a little stocked with Tak’s extra snacks. Zim leaves to check the cores one more time before they take off again, and Tak and Tenn stand alone in the kitchen and finish putting away their groceries.

“You know, eventually you won’t even have your own shelf,” says Tenn with a grin.  


“I don’t know what you mean,” Tak says.

“I think you do.”

Tak glances at Tenn and lets the look linger. She scoffs. 

“Your face looks so stupid right now.”

“How does my face look stupid?” Tenn asks.

“You’re all smirky. Like you think you’re so smart.”

“I _am_ so smart.”

Tak nudges against Tenn’s shoulder with her own as she makes her way out of the kitchen. “Mhm. Sure you are.”

“I am.”

“I know, I know.”

“Tak—”

Tenn can’t help but grab Tak’s elbow as she turns to follow Zim to the power room. Tak looks back, surprised.

“Yes?”

Tenn doesn’t really want to get into it, and she definitely doesn’t want to make things weird. But, it’s been eating at her all day, and she can’t really help but ask.

“Why do our Tallest like you so much?”

Tak’s expression falls a little. “I don’t think they do,” she says, slowly, like she’s thinking over every word before she says it. “I don’t think they like me more than they like you or Zim.”

“They obviously do,” says Tenn, feeling desperate but not particularly caring. “They speak to you by name, and every time we call them they take special care to say goodbye to _you_.”

Tak bites her lip. Tenn can see that she’s thinking, and, usually, whatever Tak thinks, she says. But, Tak appears to be trying a different strategy, because she chews her lip for a moment before carefully extracting herself from Tenn’s grip.

“I don’t know,” she says softly. “The Tallest work in mysterious ways. I have to go check on Zim.”

“Tak—”

Tak puts a gentle hand to Tenn’s cheek. “Don’t worry about it. They were happy with our mission report. They’ll be pleased when we deliver the vice admiral, and then they’re going to give us another mission.”

Tenn hates this desperate feeling, but she can’t help it. At least, with Tak, she knows her display of weakness won’t be exploited. “Are you sure they liked it?”

“Yes,” says Tak firmly. “I’m sure. I have to go, now, though, okay?”

“Okay,” says Tenn softly. “Come to the cockpit after?”

“I will.”

Tak wanders off, and Tenn, chewing on the inside of her cheek, watches her go. 

**iv.**

Dib has had it with living with these fucking irkens. 

The more time he spends with him, the more he’s convinced that all of his prior beliefs about irkens were completely true.

Tak and Zim fight constantly. They tussle in the cockpit most of the time — where they can have an audience, Dib suspects. They also fight in the hallways, in the kitchen, in their weird little bunk room — et cetera. One time, Dib found them wrestling in his own room, when he had been walking around and was actually finally feeling like he could go to sleep. They hadn’t explained why there were in there in the first place, and didn’t really seem to know themselves, and Dib was fairly certain that a fight in the hallway had just somehow, naturally, led them into med bay.

And they certainly don’t play-fight. It isn’t as if they wrestle like it’s some kind of cute, sexy game for the two of them (not that Dib wouldn’t doubt that beating the shit out of each other was some kind of freaky, Irken foreplay — ew, and not like he wants to think about it). But, no, this really seems to be about just being as aggressive and violent as possible. Once, Dib came into the cockpit to find that Tak’s antenna was bent the wrong way, its curls to hanging over her forehead. She couldn’t hear a thing all day. Another time, Dib had been sitting in med bay, staring at the ceiling, when a terrifying _whoosh_ and a sudden change in air pressure made him lightheaded. He thought the ship was going down and sprinted into the cockpit, only to find Tak standing on the upper deck with her arms crossed and Zim floating just outside, waving his arms and moving his mouth like he was screaming. It was exhausting, like being around two insane, violent toddlers. That’s really what they are, he reasons. Just two absolutely batshit children that were hell-bent on beating each other half to death every time one of them felt a modicum of boredom. 

It isn’t just the fighting that Dib found annoying. All three of them are also terribly exclusive, for a group of losers that were, obviously, well beneath Dib, status-wise. They play this weird Irken card game that Dib could never understand, and every time he approaches them to learn, they tell him to go away. They share candy with each other, and never with Dib, who had been granted a case of foul-tasting nutrition bars for their journey and nothing else. They only include Dib in conversations when he has to butt his way in, and they usually have no interest in what he has to say, even if what he has to say is actually really interesting, which, usually, it is. And then, every time he gets on their collective last nerve, they all yell at him, shouting insults over each other, until Dib just gives up and storms out of the cockpit. It’s infuriating. 

A few days after the supply run, the ship actually does experience some maintenance issues. There are too many jobs to go around for the number of irkens present, though. And so, by some strange happenstance, Dib is sent to the power room to guide Zim in fixing the busted power cores.

He stands at the control panel and watches Zim instruct him on how to monitor the power chamber, input the cores’ information, and use the intercom. Zim points him to some kind of gauge in the middle of the control panel.

“This is how you will keep track of my vitals. If they slip too low, the radiation will poison me and my PAK.”

The honesty surprises Dib. He thinks back to the last time he was here, when Tak had accused him of trying to lock Zim in this chamber and kill him.

“When it gets here,” Zim says, pointing almost all the way to the far end on the right side of the gauge, “let me know and I’ll come out.” 

“Are you sure?” Dib asks. “That seems pretty far over.” He points to a mark on the gauge, right where the color shifts from light to dark pink. “Is this not where I should call you?” 

Zim’s antennae flatten against his head. Dib braces for impact.

“Obviously I know my ship better than _you_ do, Dib-monkey!” he shouts. “And _obviously_ , if I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it!”

“Well, maybe what you’re telling me to do is stupid, so I don’t want to do it!” Dib fires back.

In a flash, Zim’s foot comes up and between the cuffs of Dib’s binds. He’s had them on his wrists for so long, the skin underneath is scraped and sore, and he can’t help but whimper as Zim pushes downward, hunching Dib forward and pressing his knee into Dib’s chest, so Dib’s face is level with his own and he can barely breathe. 

Zim bunches the hair on top of Dib’s head and sneers.

“You are not in a position to be refusing my orders, Dib,” Zim growls. “Do as I say.”

Dib narrows his eyes. 

“Or what? You wouldn’t kill me. You need me.”

Zim pulls his foot back, then delivers a hard kick to Dib’s shin. Dib yelps and doubles over, annoyed that he’d kind of asked for that. 

“Ow,” he gasps, the impact of Zim’s tiny foot colliding with his shin shooting up toward his already-painful knee. “Dick.”

“Just monitor the radiation levels.”

Dib straightens slowly and turns back to the control panel. He tries to just stare at it, but he can’t really help himself, so he peeks over at where Zim is slipping into the chamber’s air lock, shutting the door, and then stepping into the chamber itself.

Dib’s been thinking about the ship’s power setup for a while, and he can only imagine that they have so many backup cores because at least one seems to be failing at any given time. This ship really was a piece of junk.

He watches Zim lift off slowly into anti-gravity, thinking about how, a lifetime ago, he used to think that alien technology was only something he’d steal from Zim, if he got lucky. Now, he had gotten used to having it at his fingertips at any time, making his food, flying his ship, dimming and brightening the lights of his bedroom. It would be fascinating if it hadn’t gotten so mundane. And now, Dib, the captain of a spacefaring vessel with a crew of aliens, could barely be bothered to be interested. 

Zim floats to one of the red-lit power cores and pulls it from the wall. 

“Core number fifteen, damage severe to ultra-severe,” Dib hears over the intercom.

“Well, which one is it?” asks Dib, fingertips hovering over the keyboard. “Severe or ultra-severe?”

“It’s severe to ultra-severe.”

“That doesn’t really mean anything.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It means it is between severe and very severe!” Zim snaps, and Dib looks from the control panel to where Zim is floating in the chamber. “How is that not clear!”

“How could you possibly think it _is_ clear?!”

“That’s the system we work with, just type it into the database so I can fix it and we can be done!”

“Well, your system sucks!”

“Dib—!”

Dib’s gaze dodges to Zim, still hovering in the chamber, the broken core right in front of him, spilling radiation all over the place. Zim’s face looks purple, and his eyes are watering and— shit. Dib checks the gauge. Shit.

“What are you doing!” he hears, and then he’s thrown to the side like a crumpled-up piece of paper. 

Still in cuffs and unable to right himself, Dib slams into the wall with a hard thud. When he opens his eyes, he sees Tak, standing at the control panel, her hands racing across the keys.

“Zim,” she says into the intercom. “Put the core back.”

Dib turns to watch Zim do as she says, his entire body shaking. Tak disables the anti-gravity function of the chamber and Zim somewhat gracelessly falls back to the floor, just barely landing on his feet. He stumbles out through the airlock and falls on his hands and knees.

Tak rushes to him and pulls him to his feet, then half-carries, half-drags him to the control panel. She types in more commands and that same metal tube fits into one of the pink circles on Zim’s PAK. Zim can’t keep himself upright on the control panel, so Tak has to hold him, their hands gripped on each other’s shoulders.

“Alright?” she asks, her voice shaking, and Dib pulls himself up.

Standing, he gets a better view of Zim over Tak’s shoulder. He looks horrible — his skin is mottled and gray, his eyes are sunken in, his limbs are trembling. He looks like he’s about to keel over.

“Should I—” Dib begins.

“You’ve done enough!” Tak snaps, not even looking at him, her antennae pinned to her head. “Get out of here!”

“I’m— look, I didn’t— I didn’t think—”

Tak spares him one furious look over her shoulder. “ _Go_.” 

He goes.

Things are tense after the incident in the power room. Still, sitting alone in med bay is too boring for Dib, and he finds himself in the cockpit again, a day or two later (it’s hard to tell how long it’s been, given that irkens seem to have no internal clock and barely sleep). Zim’s there, sitting in his seat in the upper deck, the chair next to him empty.

Dib has no interest in feeling sorry for Zim. Zim’s an idiot, and it’s his own fault that he can’t keep track of his own PAK getting poisoned while he’s doing maintenance. And, why should Dib care if Zim dies? Zim tried to take over the Earth hundreds of times. He’d even tried to kill Dib every once in a while. So, Dib certainly didn’t feel a twinge of regret when he remembered how shitty Zim had looked coming out of the chamber. Swear to Sathana, he didn’t.

Dib takes the seat next to Zim, who’s sitting with his chin on his knees and his arms wrapped around his legs, looking pensive. 

“So,” says Dib, “you guys ever gonna let me out of these cuffs?” 

Zim actually jumps a little at Dib’s question, while Tenn and Tak, sharing the seat on the lower deck, as they usually do, turn back to frown at him.

Zim looks at Dib’s bound wrists, rubbed raw and starting to bleed. 

“My back is killing me because of this,” Dib adds.

“Hm,” says Zim, leaning forward to expect the damage further. “I suppose it would be.”

“Yeah, so, can you take them off, please?” 

Zim just shrugs and looks away. Tak stands up out of the pilot’s chair, dumping Tenn on the floor as she does.

“Hey!” Tenn shouts.

Tak advances on Dib like a predator, then stops when she’s far enough into Dib’s personal space that he’s uncomfortable. She drops a knee onto the seat, between Dib’s legs and right at his crotch, then grabs the armrests.

“Do you really think you should be asking for favors right now, after what happened when you were doing maintainence?” she barks. “Do you really think we’d do you the kindness of giving you _greater_ opportunity to hurt us? How stupid do you think we are?”

Dib leans back in his seat. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone,” he snaps, “and if you really didn’t trust me, you shouldn’t have put me in charge of babysitting Zim in the first place.” 

“Excuse me,” Zim pipes up. “You weren’t _babysitting_ anyone—”

Tak flaps a hand at Zim, silencing him. “It was either that or let the ship fail and float through deep space forever. Or, in your case, starve to death. I thought you’d maybe have enough braincells to understand that your own life was at stake, too.” She narrows her eyes. “But I guess not.” 

Dib narrows his eyes right back at her. “It was an accident.”

“If you must spend your time with us acting like a child, then you get treated like a child.”

“I’m not—”

“So, no, Dib, you may not be freed from your handcuffs.”

Tak stands upright and takes a step back. 

“Normal people don’t put children in handcuffs,” Dib can’t help but say. “Maybe irkens do, but—”

“Keep talking like that and you’ll have two black eyes,” Tak says, not even looking, walking back to where Tenn is sitting at the pilot’s seat and plopping down on her lap. 

They drive in silence for _maybe_ a minute when Zim pipes up.

“It wasn’t babysitting, by the way."

Tak’s head whips around, and she and Zim lock eyes, and, next thing Dib knows, they’re fighting again. And Tak hadn’t even been the one to call it babysitting in the first place. Unbelievable.

Tak and Zim had pinned each other to the floor at least half a dozen times when Dib’s gaze drifts to the windshield and he sees a sight so terrifying that his stomach drops.

“Is that a—?” Dib begins.

“Narcocrossata!” Zim shrieks from where Tak has him trapped in a headlock. “Catch it! _Catch it_!”

He and Tak leap to the front of the cockpit and grip the dashboard, still panting from their tussle. The four of them stare as the creature floats further into their line of sight. 

Iapetuns didn’t call them narcocrossatae, but any Irken-dominated colony adopted the language that the irkens had always used. Dib doesn’t know where they came from, but he’d learned in his studies all about what iapetuns referred to as _malideos_. Malideos were enormous, deep-spacefaring creatures with bell-shaped bodies and long, trailing tentacles. They were a dark color and nearly transparent, but, as they traveled, they were just barely visible, their movements looking like wrinkles in the dark stretch of space. At least, that what they looked like when they were relaxed, or sleeping. When they were hunting, as this one is now, their bodies were pearlescent and illuminated so bright so that they were almost blinding. They left trails like enormous comet tails behind them to entice their prey to follow them into the deeper recesses of space. The whole display was bright and dazzling, long streams of light in swirling shades of green and pink and blue. Eventually, when the malideo had a long enough train of prey following behind them, it will stop and spread its tentacles wide, inviting its dazed prey to stroll right into its waiting mouth.

They used to terrify Dib as a child. He’d been on the bridge with Aaro the first day that he’d seen one in real life — huge and graceful and stunning. Aaro had alerted the navigators to turn around immediately, and they had, and the detour had added weeks to their mission. It hadn’t mattered, though. Aaro had assured Dib that if he ever laid eyes on a malideo after he became captain of his own ship, he was expected to take the appropriate measures to avoid it. They were dangerous, he’d told Dib. They would suck a full-sized warship into their tentacles if it came anywhere near one, and the ship would never be seen or heard from again.

And, apparently, Zim wanted to catch it.

“Come on, go into hyperdrive!” Tak shouts, jumping up on her toes.

To Dib’s horror, Tenn complies.

“Wait!” he shouts. “What are you doing?!”

“We’re jumping in the stream!” says Tenn, piloting their little ship — much smaller than an Iapetun warship, and already too close — right into the malideo’s trail.

“No! You can’t! It’ll — it’ll suck us up! What are you _doing_?!” Dib’s frozen in his seat, his fists balled tight and his aching wrists screaming in protest. “ _Stop_!”

“Quit whining, human monkey!” Tak shouts. “It’s fun! Watch!”

The irkens scream with joy as Tenn approaches the stream, and then it’s right there, taking up the entire windshield, and then they’re diving in. 

Dib hears himself scream like a child, but he can’t help himself. Tenn, Tak, and Zim all howl with excited laughter as they splash into the malideo’s trail. 

It’s surreal. 

All Dib can hear is the deafening _whoosh_ of the irkens’ ship soaring through the trail. All around him are bright, flowing colors, like something out of a wild, overly-saturated technicolor dream. Dib’s eyes are wide as they swim deeper and deeper through the trail, as the colors become brighter, more diverse, until Dib feels like he’s looking at colors he’s never seen before, colors he could never even fathom. His stomach roils but his panic stills and — oh. Oh. 

This is incredible. 

He hears the irkens on the lower deck whooping and laughing together as they go, and he doesn’t realize when he starts laughing along, enjoying the high of tearing through the malideo’s stream — it’s intoxicating, and Dib feels like he’s flying, like he’s never been this close to himself before. There’s noises all around him but his eyes are wide and he’s eager to keep diving, to swim deeper and deeper and deeper—

“Mouth!”

Dib doesn’t know who shouts it, but the next thing he knows, he’s staring into the gaping maw of the malideo, flying right towards its rows and rows and rows of giant, razor-sharp teeth that could crush him in an instant, crush an entire Iapetun warship—

He’s screaming as Tenn makes a quick exit out of the stream, just in time for them to avoid the open, hungry jaws of the malideo. 

Dib’s still laughing.

He’s hysterical, his adrenaline bursting out of his veins and the colors still dancing in front of his eyes. The irkens are laughing too, clutching their bellies and watching each other come down from it.

And then they aren’t, and then it’s just Dib laughing.

He realizes belatedly that they’re all staring at him. He shuts up.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” asks Tak, a mean smile on her face.

Dib pants a couple of times, catching his breath. “Uh,” he breathes. 

They’re all watching him.

He gets up and leaves.

When the door to the cockpit closes behind him, he sprints back to med bay.

Dib lies down and forces himself to take deep breaths until his heart rate evens out. He closes his eyes and replays the memory of the malideo — it was beautiful, he thinks, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen since coming to space and — wow. Wow.

Dib keeps his eyes closed until he feels grounded enough to open them. When he’s finally relaxed, he frowns. Why hadn’t Aaro told him that they could do that?

Everything he knew about space, Dib had learned from Aaro. He rarely spent any of the past — how many? — years away from Aaro’s side. In fact, the only real relationships he’d had were with Aaro and Lobo, until Aaro got promoted and his ship, the _Titan_ , was passed down to Dib.

Still, Dib barely knew his crew. He barely knew anyone. 

He thinks about the malideo. Had Aaro been wrong to be so afraid of it? Was Aaro wrong about other things, too?

Dib shakes himself. It doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t be disrespecting Aaro like this, it’s not — what do Tenn, Zim, and Tak know, anyway? Maybe Aaro is right to be cautious, and they all just got lucky that they didn’t get swallowed whole by an enormous space monster.

He needs to focus. The sooner he’s back with the iapetuns, the better. 

**v.**

Grocery Drone Mae is on the fortieth hour of her shift when two aliens enter the otherwise quiet store. 

“Hail Sathana,” says the first one, entering with a flourish as his floor-length cape whips around his legs.

“What?” says Mae. 

“He said, ‘hail Sathana,’” barks the second one, close behind the first.

“Oh. Okay.”

The two aliens, tall as her Tallest, lean and dressed in all black, approach the counter. The first, with dark, charcoal skin and shiny, colorless hair that falls to his waist in an intricate set of braids, slaps a photograph on the counter in front of her. She peers at the photograph. It’s a different kind of alien, one that she thinks she’s seen before.

“Do you recognize this person?” asks the first alien.

“Uh,” says Mae.

It’s hard to say — the one in the picture is clean-cut, with a haughty look in its eye and a thin, tight frown. The clothes look similar, though, just much more neatly pressed than the rumpled garb that she might have seen around the beginning of her shift. In this picture, its back is straight and its glare is sharp, while, earlier today, it was hunched over with a purple eye and lots of complaints about those irkens it was traveling with. But, yes, Mae thinks. That could be the same one she’d seen earlier.

“I think so?” Mae finally says. “Yes, it looks like someone that was here.”

“Alone?” the first alien asks.

“No,” says Mae. She shrugs. “With some irkens.”

Normally, she would be more careful about divulging information to strange aliens. But, she happened to know that the irkens in question were practically exiles, so whatever they were doing couldn’t have been _that_ important. 

“How many?”

“Three.”

The second alien steps forward. “And he was… just with them? He did not try to escape?”

“Well, they had ’em leashed.”

For the first time, the first alien’s face takes on a hint of emotion. His eyes narrow and his nostrils flare.

“When?” asks the first alien. “Approximately how long ago?”

Mae shrugs. “Beginning of the day, I’d say.”

“And how long ago would that be, _approximately_?” the first alien growls. “We didn’t exactly feel the need to research the day cycles of this disgusting rest stop.” 

Hey. That was uncalled for.

“About thirty-eight hours ago,” says Mae, her chest tight. 

The first alien turns to glare at the second one. “Do you hear that, Lobo?” he growls. “Thirty-eight Irken hours.”

“A long time,” the second one says, head bowed. 

The aliens say nothing for a moment. Mae watches as the first one waits for the second one to look up. When he does, the first alien steps toward him, so close that they’re toe to toe. 

“A long time,” the first alien repeats, his voice low. “You lost him a long time ago, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Aaro,” says the second alien through his teeth. “I didn’t mean—”

“ _Admiral_ Aaro,” the first one corrects. He steps aside and starts for the door. “Let’s get back to the ship. We need to find him a put a stop to this.”

The aliens leave without a word to Mae. She watches them go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i know you guys were like "andy it's been so long since those big deer tell us where's the megafauna" well don't worry i'm always here to deliver the megafauna


	5. Irken Mating Habits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, darling, you bring out the worst in me. Sometimes, when I'm around you, I feel like pure evil.” - Orville Peck 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for some fairly vague smut at the end but don't worry it's like 9K words away. 
> 
> this ones for chammy

**i.**

Dib sits in the cockpit, watching as Zim, Tenn, and Tak sit crowded together, all sharing the one pilot’s chair, playing that stupid card game that they refuse to teach him.

Zim, sitting on Tak, slaps a card down on top of the pile on the dashboard. “I win!”

Tak, sitting beneath Zim but halfway on top of Tenn, flings her cards in Zim’s face with an exasperated shout.

Dib rolls his eyes. 

They’ve been at it for hours, and they never once took Dib up on his offer to join them. 

“Aren’t you guys bored of that stupid game yet?” he asks.

Three irken heads whip around to peer at him, and Dib huffs. 

“Come to think of it,” says Tenn, “I _am_ a little bored.”

“Are you?” asks Tak, and Dib can hear that she’s smiling. “If only there were someone to regale us with stories of how he conquered the most disgusting, pitiful planet in the galaxy.”

There’s a pause. 

“Oh!” Zim shouts. “Me!”

“Wait,” says Dib. “You actually conquered a planet?”

“Of course he did,” says Tenn. “He conquered that nasty puke-ball you used to live on.”

Dib’s eyes go wide. Zim hadn’t mentioned actually _conquering_ Earth. 

How could he have let this happen? What, exactly, had happened? Had the Armada come? Was there nothing left of Earth? Were his people enslaved? Why hadn’t Aaro told him? Why hadn’t the Intervention Force done something? 

Was his dad okay? His sister? What were the irkens doing to them?

“You actually conquered it?” Dib asks, his face burning.

Zim hops out of the pilot’s chair and stretches. “Pretty much.”

“What do you mean, ‘pretty much’?”

“I mean,” says Zim, and then he pauses, putting a finger to his chin and looking away in thought, “well, who really knows? It was a long time ago.”

“Not that long,” says Dib. “What did you do? What’s happening there?”

“How should I know?” asks Zim. “I’ve moved on to bigger and better missions, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Wha— wait, you can’t just… you have no idea?” Dib feels the rage build, because he’s almost certain that Zim does know and is just enjoying dangling the information above his head. 

“Zim, tell us the hamster story again,” pipes up Tenn, and Zim turns away from Dib.

“Well, it wasn’t long after I arrived on that filthy, useless ball of mud…” Zim begins. 

Dib’s blood starts to boil. 

“… And I got the ingenious idea to turn my class’s little vermin pet into a living war machine. So, I was working in my lab…”

Dib remembers the whole thing with that hamster, just barely — it was one of the first times Zim’s antics had done major damage. Dib remembers the experiment getting out of hand and Zim fighting against it, until he eventually took it down. He remembers being called crazy over the whole ordeal, even as the rest of the town stood right next to him and watched their hamster take enormous bites out of various buildings.

At this point, Zim is standing on the dashboard, punching and kicking the air and jumping up and down. 

“… And then, once he was… oh, I don’t know — nearly the size of a Snarl Beast, I’d say —I leapt upon his back and, together, we destroyed the entire city! Millions of people, jumping from burning buildings! And I was there, standing on the back of my mighty war beast, with a great, big whip that was… on fire! And—”

“Wait. That’s not what happened.” 

The irkens all turn to look at Dib again. He stares at Zim.

“You didn’t ride around on his back. You— he was too strong for you, and you used your ship to blow him into space.”

“What are you talking about, worm?” Zim snaps. “Obviously, the monster and I took down city after city until he died from, uh, getting shot with a cannon, or something.”

“No, you didn’t,” Dib presses. “That’s not what happened at all.”

“Let him tell the story!” Tak says. 

“Yeah,” adds Tenn. “You’re ruining the fun, Dib-monkey.”

“He—!” Dib gestures toward Zim. “He’s lying! And, how is this fun? He’s talking about destroying the Earth and… and… and killing a bunch of people!”

“What does it matter to you, anyway, worm?” Zim asks, his hands on his hips. “You don’t even care about Earth anymore.”

Dib locks eyes with Zim, and then his face goes hotter.

They say nothing for a while, and Dib just sits there, burning, while Zim grins smugly right back at him. 

Dib gets up and storms out. As the door slams shut, he hears Zim: “So, as I was _saying_ —”

Dib sits in his bed and fumes. 

He needs a plan, he realizes. Something to get these stupid irkens to fall in line and start listening to him. Something, at least, to shift the power dynamic more in his favor.

What would Aaro do? Knowing him, Aaro would have already established himself as the irkens’ leader by now. He would have gotten their attention, showed them that he’s the smart one, the one they should be listening to. But, how can Dib do that? He’s still stuck in cuffs, so he can’t fight anyone. The irkens don’t even listen to him, so how can he convince them to follow his orders? He needed some kind of advantage, something he could use to make the irkens start listening to him or, at least, stir up some controversy among their tight-knit group.

He gets an idea a few days later. His eye was finally healed, no thanks to supplies in the so-called medical room that he slept in. He was also quite a few days into living in the same clothes, and even he would admit, it was starting to get bad.

The irkens gave him a new pair of handcuffs, ones which were held together by some kind of magnets, remote-controlled by the irkens so that Dib could slip in and out of his clothes and actually be able to use the shower. Of course, every time he did, someone was guarding the door to make sure he didn’t — what? Flood the bathroom? Fog up the mirror? Dib isn’t sure what they think he’ll do if left unsupervised for very long. Either way, they were starting to care more about his hygiene, and Dib can’t really complain — even he would admit that his clothes were starting to smell. 

So, he doesn’t whine that much when the irkens force him to soak his clothes in the sink one day. Stuck in just his underpants and an old novelty t-shirt of Zim’s that sits tight on his shoulders and halfway up his midriff, he wanders out of the bathroom in search of sustenance. He runs into Zim and Tak in the hallway on his way to the kitchen, and Zim’s eyes land on his bare stomach and stick there until Zim trips over his own feet and he almost falls over as they pass each other, making Tak laugh.

Dib’s been in space long enough that he knows how to recognize the type of aliens who like to stick with their own kind and the type who were open to exploring. Basically, he knows a xenophile when he sees one. And, he has to laugh, because all it had taken was some partial nudity to get Zim tripping over his feet. He’d heard of Aaro using his own wiles on occasion to get the upper hand. Maybe Dib could do it, too. 

It’s an idea. Maybe not an incredible one, but it’s something, and Dib’s fed up.

He’s grateful, at least, that Zim’s the one to make his attraction to Dib known. Dib’s certain he could make it happen with any of the three of them — his height, at least, should give him an advantage in that regard. But, still, he would prefer Zim. He still can’t stand to be around Tenn. He’s still annoyed that she’d lucked out and managed to kidnap him from his own ship. Plus, Tenn has a voice like a sweet little bell, and her eyes are as pink as a sunset. All she does is sit in the cockpit and drive the ship. On occasion, she’ll boss Zim or Tak around a little. But, as far as Dib can tell, Tenn is as bland as the nutrition bars he’s forced to eat, and she doesn’t care about much of anything beyond pleasing the Tallest and playing cards. She stands just a hair shorter than Tak, and Dib decides that having her would probably be too easy, and not fun at all. In fact, Dib has no interest in Tenn whatsoever. He might consider Tak, but he decides she’d probably make good on her promise to kill and eat him if he did. Plus, she hadn’t given Dib a second look on the day he’d been soaking his clothes. Not like Zim. 

He’s sitting on the upper deck, looking over at Zim and letting the idea roll around in his head for a moment.

Zim’s the shortest of the group by a noticeable margin, so the top of his head meets the bottom of Dib’s sternum. Zim’s frame, like Tenn’s and Tak’s was fairly normal for an irken: Wider through the shoulders and ribcage, then tapering off abruptly — evidence of the fact that Zim only had one main abdominal organ where most species had several. It lived behind his ribs, so the rest of his torso is just muscle and bone. Zim’s limbs were slim, and his jaw was defined and sharp and his face was a little wide, so it was impossible to tell, from an outsider’s perspective, how old he was. All irkens look like that, like they’re these ageless creatures with all of the knowledge in the universe, but none of the wisdom. Zim’s eyes are pink, like Tenn’s, but not as annoyingly so. Zim’s were darker, deeper, big and round.

Dib can spot a xenophile because, frankly, he’s one, too. And he can barely remember what Zim looked like back on Earth, not that he would have been thinking about Zim like this, back then. But, here, in the present, Dib doesn’t hate what he sees. He could make this work, at least once.

The thing is, Dib had never had to make anything like this work. His past experiences in this department had been handed to him in the form of Aaro dropping him off on a party planet with a money card and telling him to call when he was ready to be picked up.

It started a few years after Aaro had rescued Dib. Things were becoming routine: Dib had been convinced to stay aboard and return to Earth after his schooling was done. Aaro had taken Dib under his wing, taught him how to speak Iapetun, taught him everything about his culture.

Aaro didn’t really believe in privacy or personal space, so when he walked into Dib’s room one morning to find him furiously getting himself off, he’d been shocked. Next thing Dib knew, Aaro was taking a personal day to drive Dib to Zeltron, giving him a quick explanation of the etiquette, and telling him to figure the rest out for himself. Dib had, in part out of a fear that, somehow, Aaro would be disappointed if he didn’t, and in part because he thought he might explode from pent-up energy. He’d fucked his way through almost half of the little planet by the time Aaro found him in a dingy motel and brought him back to his ship, then sent him to med bay to clear him of all the infections he’d picked up. To Dib’s glee, Aaro _had_ been proud. He’d asked Dib for details and everything, gave some pointers on which species were the best to try which stuff with, and then given Dib a congratulatory pat on the back. 

That was before Dib lost track of how long he’d been with Aaro. He thinks that he was fifteen or so at the time, but he really can’t remember.

There was one time, maybe the second or third time Dib had gone to Zeltron, when Aaro picked him up. They spoke about the different brothels Dib had visited, the people he was becoming familiar with there, the new kinds of aliens that he’d hooked up with. Dib couldn’t explain why he was nervous, but he was as he tentatively told Aaro about his first night, how an issue with the translator had resulted in one of the aliens leading him to a room, pushing him onto his back, and spreading his legs. He’d never been opposed to experimentation, though (that was the whole point, he’d thought), so he’d gone with it.

Aaro went silent for a while, and Dib watched his face, nervous as a contemplative expression took over.

“You enjoyed this?” Aaro had asked. 

“Uh,” Dib had replied. “Yes?”

“Hm.” 

Another long pause had followed. Dib remembers holding his breath.

“You always surprise me, Dib Membrane,” Aaro had said, and Dib had felt his ears go hot, because Aaro only ever called him by his full name when he was angry with him.

“Is that… should I not have?” Dib had asked, his traitorous, adolescent voice cracking at the end.

Another long pause, and then: “No, you shouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

Aaro’s eyes had narrowed at that, and his frown had deepened. “Dib,” he’d said. “I understand if things are… more dysfunctional, where you came from. But, here, we have rules. Iapetun men do not… we don’t let ourselves be… taken over, like that. We remain in charge, at all times. Even during intimate times. We are always men.”

Dib’s whole face had flushed at that, and his gaze dropped to his hands. “I… I’m sorry,” he’d said, and he’d meant it. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think… it didn’t feel like I was being… taken over, I guess—”

“Well, you must not have been thinking clearly,” snapped Aaro. “Obviously, you had no understanding of what was really going on.”

“I… I guess not—”

“No son of mine will let himself be pushed around and made to submit,” Aaro had growled. “Certainly not by some common whore from Zeltron.” 

Aaro turned to give Dib a stern look. Dib took a breath and met Aaro’s gaze.

“We are taking back the colonies from Irk. Do you understand that? We need to be the aggressors, in all senses of the word. That is our role. We are fighting for the freedom of this entire galaxy. We don’t let ourselves be made to submit. Nor do we particularly want to.”

Dib had just nodded, his face still flushed, a little thrill forming in the pit of his stomach, despite Aaro’s disappointment. It was the first time Aaro had called him his son. 

Now, Dib looks Zim over, considering Aaro’s words. He wonders what Zim would be like, after he’d given himself over to Dib. He imagines that irken mating habits are based on height, based on dominance, since that's what Irk's entire culture revolves around. It could just be quick — something in med bay, maybe, or in Zim’s uncomfortable-looking sleeping pod. Maybe even in the cockpit, if Dib was feeling bold, while Tenn and Tak were off napping or doing whatever it was they did when they left Zim in there by himself on occasion. They could do that, with Zim bent over the dashboard, begging for Dib’s forgiveness for being so ignorant, so dismissive. 

Something about the idea feels funny as Dib tries to imagine it, though. He’d never done something like this, never outright manipulated anyone, certainly never with sex. He’d never had to do anything but wave his money card for that before, but — well, really, what would the harm be? He’d at least shake things up, maybe turn the irkens against each other over it, a little, and then he’d be able to step in as the one in charge. It wasn’t like sex was a particularly delicate issue anyway, was it? Whatever feelings Zim attached to it wouldn’t be Dib’s problem. And Dib had certainly never known many feelings to attach to sex beyond the physical. 

It was about power, like Aaro had said. Establishing who was in charge. 

It would be fine, he tells himself. He’ll get what he wants, the irkens will stop treating him like a useless work animal and more like the captain he was, and he could fuck with Zim a little bit while he was at it. That could at least be fun.

**ii.**

Zim can’t explain why it happened, but he’s fairly sure that everyone else noticed, too, when the Dib-creature stepped from the bathroom, steam tumbling around him, his hair still wet and his clothes — _Zim’s_ clothes, actually — clinging to his torso like a second skin. Zim hadn’t been expecting it, which was why, he reasons, his PAK appeared to have fully stalled for a moment as his eyes trailed down Dib’s stupid, fleshy, half-naked body.

_Huh_ , had been his first thought, one of confused recognition as he realizes that Dib had inherited Professor Membrane’s height, his broad shoulders, his sturdy, commanding form. And, well, Dib certainly looks nothing like he did when they were back on Earth, and Zim really can’t remember the any other humans looking the way Dib does, now. Most humans were kind of dumpy-looking, with undefined, uninteresting bodies that were tall, yes, but also just generally unappealing and uninteresting. Maybe it was the relief of finally not having his antennae assaulted by the smell of Dib’s body odor, or maybe it was something else, something entirely Dib-related that made his spooch start pumping his blood faster and his mind start racing to a hundred different ideas at once — whatever it was, it was enough to make Zim trip over his feet. It was enough for Zim to dodge away as fast as he could, not without noticing the curious expression on the Dib-creature’s face.

This could only end poorly for Zim.

Sometime after Earth, after being admitted to advanced training in the Dome, after maybe a year or so of training every day and sleeping fitfully when his schedule permitted, something awoke in Zim which he hadn’t been expecting. It wasn’t really natural anymore for irkens to feel this way, but Zim went to the medic enough times with flimsy, transparent excuses to confirm that, no, he didn’t have the brain worms, or some kind of parasite, or a virus in his PAK. 

It was unnatural, bred out of his people long before he was activated, but he’d developed it, all on his own, this roiling, aching hunger that built up quickly and was impossible to get rid of. It was a hollow pocket in his chest, and he spoke about it with no one but feared that everyone knew, and now, on his ship with his teammates and this — this _alien_ , this creature from a planet that Zim had been assigned to conquer — was making him feel all the more empty inside. 

He speaks of it with no one, even though Tenn knows most of the details and Tak knows one or two. They don’t speak of it with him, either, so he figures if he doesn’t ask, he won’t have to tell. It’s nothing personal against Tenn and Tak, it’s just that he prefers if it were his unfortunate problem to deal with. The whole thing is laced with shame, from the first time he’d seen a fellow trainee in a flattering light and realized something that gave him chills, to the day before he’d been assigned the cancri — it’s all bad, all unfortunate, none of it worth addressing at all, for any reason.

And if sometimes his ache is more thorny than hungry, more of a hurt than a carnal need, more indicative of something truly treasonous — he just prefers if that were no one’s problem to deal with, and that’s how he’ll keep it. 

The Dib-creature, desperate for the attention that Tenn, Tak, and Zim have been happily denying him for some time now, sidles up to Zim one day when he’s leaving the power room. 

He’s shirtless this time, but at least he has on his his pants, the waistline high enough so Zim’s slightly less able to see the appealing jut of his hipbones. His eyes drift upward for a second to the shoulders and arms, lean but muscled. Might be worse than the hips.

Dib offers Zim something — his old shirt, right, which Tak had so carelessly given away. Zim takes it. It smells like Dib.

“Thanks for letting me borrow this,” says Dib. “Sorry if I stretched it out.” 

“Oh,” said Zim, holding up the shirt. 

Dib _had_ stretched it out. Oh, well.

“It’s fine, I guess.” 

“I’m really sorry for before, too.”

Zim looks up, catching Dib’s eye.

“Before?” 

“You know, in the power room. Uh, when we were arguing about the gauge and stuff, and you… uh, almost got really hurt, I guess.”

“Oh,” says Zim. “Right.”

He hadn’t thought about that in a while — he remembered it as a consequence of Dib’s carelessness, his bigheadedness (and, actually, his head was still quite large). He’d been fine, though, and he hadn’t dwelt on it much.

“Yeah, I just… I guess I kind of hated seeing you like that. You know? It made me feel pretty bad, is all. I really didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”  


Zim frowns, then steps to the side and pushes past Dib. “It’s fine. I barely noticed, anyway.” He shoots Dib a suspicious look. “Stop being weird.”

“Sorry,” Dib says to his back, “just trying to let you know I felt bad.”

Zim marches down the hall, his mind buzzing. What was that all about? The Dib never apologized for anything. Why would he apologize, now, for an incident that had happened almost two weeks ago? What game was he playing?

Since the Dib’s arrival, Zim hasn’t really been sure what to do with him. Zim had never expected to see Dib again, and he certainly had never expected to be like this — hotheaded, sure, and clearly full of himself, more selfish than Zim had ever known him — but, also… different. Zim wasn’t sure how to exactly say it, but the Dib was… somehow more pathetic than he was last time Zim had seen him. Annoying him was less fun, even if indulging him was still unthinkable. Now, he was less a thorn in Zim’s side and more an unwanted reminder of Zim’s past, of the problems Zim hadn’t been facing, back then on Earth.

Zim thinks about Dib’s shirtless form, the dusting of hair on his chest and arms, the well-developed muscle—

The mapping of scars, all over his torso, some clean and thin, others thick, ugly, and twisted.

Dib approaches him again the next day. It’s just the two of them, again, and Zim finds Dib leaning against the wall outside the cockpit, clad in a black undershirt and his pants this time, thank Irk, but still sporting that unsettling expression of sincerity. 

“Hey, space boy,” Dib says, and the old name feels like a strike across Zim’s face. “Fancy seeing you here.” 

Zim pauses at the door, his hand hovering above the glowing triangle in front of him.

“What do you want, Earth-swine?” Zim asks, his antennae pinned. “Come to beg for my forgiveness, again?” 

“Not this time,” says Dib smoothly. “I thought we were all past that.” Dib takes a step to the side, placing himself between Zim and the door. “I thought we were all friends, now.”

“Invaders don’t have friends,” says Zim automatically. 

“Make an exception,” says Dib, leaning forward, already toe-to-toe with Zim, but closing into his space even more. 

“Ew, no,” says Zim, and he shoves Dib to the side. 

Dib, still bound and unable to throw his arms out to balance himself, nearly falls over. Zim leaves him behind and steps through the cockpit, where Tenn is in the pilot’s seat and Tak is curled in her lap. He takes his seat and crosses his arms.

Dib doesn’t come into the cockpit after him, which relieves Zim. He crosses one knee over the other and taps his foot on the floor, lost in thought.

Who even was Dib, now? Why was he so familiar, yet also so unpredictable? Who had taken care of him since his disappearance?

Zim considers this, as well as Dib’s confusing turn toward friendship, as the minutes tick by.

Finally: “Okay, what, Zim?”

He looks up, pulled from his thoughts by Tak’s annoyed voice.

“What?”

“What do you want?” 

“Nothing.”

Tak huffs, then shakes her head. “Why are you being so loud?”  


“I wasn’t being loud!”

“You’ve been stomping your foot and talking to yourself since you got in here!”

“I was not!”

“You were,” said Tenn, still half-focused on driving. “You’ve been mumbling to yourself and tapping your foot.”

Tak gestures to Tenn in a _see?_ kind of way, and Zim just shakes his head.

“The Dib-human is… being weird.”

“That thing is always weird,” Tak points out.

“Weirder.”

“Weirder, how?” 

Zim sighs. “He apologized for what happened in the power room. And he asked me to be his friend.”

Tenn’s antennae twitches for a moment, its lax, soft position against the pilot’s chair tightening.

“You said no, right?”

“Obviously! Invaders do not need friends!”

Tenn’s antennae softens again. “Good.” 

They sit in the cockpit together, just the three of them, saying nothing until Tenn beckons Zim to the lower deck and asks him to tell them another story of his Earth-conquests. He gladly does, and he even takes his time to provide all the necessary background information on crafting a device which turns human (and, he leaves out, irken) flesh into bologna. Tak and Tenn ask encouraging questions and compel him to exaggerate, as they often do, until the story is less about laughing at the child-Dib being chased by dogs and more about fighting off an entire pack of bologna creatures who are thirsty for his pure, Irken blood. The story goes on for some time, and he finishes with a bow when he’s done, and Tak and Tenn applaud, and he at least feels better, now, than he did earlier, back when the Dib’s confusing, smiling face was at the forefront of his mind.

Zim’s still a little on edge the next day when Dib finds him alone in the cockpit. 

“Where are the other two?” Dib asks. 

Zim doesn’t look away from the windshield, but his hands grip the yoke tighter. “Sleeping,” he lies.

Dib just shrugs. 

They drive in silence for a while, Zim in the pilot’s chair and Dib sitting on the upper deck. Zim wonders, as he’s been wondering for days, what it is Dib’s thinking. He peers upward, just for a second, to glance at Dib’s reclining form in the reflection of the windshield. Dib instantly meets his gaze and rises.

Zim’s antennae twitch as Dib approaches. He expects something: yelling, hopefully, or at least some more arguing. He can only hope that Dib doesn’t give him that same, confusing, sickly softness he’d shown the past two times they were alone together. 

Dib appears by his side as Zim puts all his efforts into ignoring him and focusing on driving. Dib sits himself on the dashboard and puts a foot in Zim’s lap.

“So,” says Dib. “What’s happening with you?” 

Zim pushes the foot away. “Nothing.”

Dib nudges the inside of Zim’s knee with his toes, pushing his knees apart a little. “Nothing?”

Zim crosses his legs. “Yup.”

He tries to focus on the space ahead of him, but they’re driving through what’s basically a big, vast chunk of nothingness, so there really isn’t much else to catch his attention.

“Hey,” says Dib, “what ever happened to that evil robot minion of yours?”

“What?” Zim asks.

“You know. That little… that little guy. Dressed up like a red dog?”

Zim’s hands freeze on the yoke. He thinks Dib notices his eyes go a little wider, because Dib nudges at Zim’s knee again. 

“It was green.” 

“What was?”

“His doggie suit was green.”

Dib leans forward, and his face is right in Zim’s, now, so Zim can’t avoid the growing hair around his jawline and his intense, unblinking gaze.

“Oh, yeah. It was green, wasn’t it?” 

Zim’s eyes lock on Dib’s. 

“What’s he up to these days?”

Zim’s whole body freezes up, and Dib stares at him with an innocent curiosity that barely — _barely_ — conceals the malice, just underneath. 

“He’s around,” Zim says. “You probably just haven’t seen him.”

“Oh, yeah?”

The line of questioning throws Zim into memories that he tries his hardest to ignore. He can’t, though — GIR’s absence is living proof, and all of the feelings that come with it are… challenging, and—

“What happened to you?” Zim asks, suddenly.

Dib raises a brow. “Me? What do you mean?”

“Before, you were… when you were giving me back your shirt, your body was—”

“Oh, yeah,” says Dib casually. “I guess you haven’t seen me in a while, huh? I’ve been in combat training since… I don’t know, long time… I guess I’m pretty strong, now.”

The thought makes Zim want to laugh, because humans, biologically, are not strong at all. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he says, and he steals a glance at the thin, white scar poking out from beneath the collar of Dib’s undershirt. “Your skin is… you look all cut up.”

Dib pauses at that, then his eyes narrow a little. “Well, not all of us have PAKs that heal us instantly.”

“Did something happen back on Earth, or—?”

Dib stands up. “No,” he says, and he leaves, just as abruptly as when he came in.

Zim doesn’t say anything as Dib stomps for the door, just lets the interaction sink in.

Everything inside him wants to believe that Dib is the same person he was when they were both on Earth together. He’s not, though, and the past few attempts at friendliness were indicators of that. It tires Zim to think of everything that’s happened in the years they were apart, and he wonders if it tires Dib, too. 

What happened to Dib? How did he get all those scars? From those imbeciles that kidnapped him, or from the iapetuns that took him in? Were they battle scars, or were they from experimentation?

Zim shutters to think of it. All of his old fears that the humans would chop him into pieces if they found out who he really was still make his skin crawl. And all of Dib’s threats of autopsy and experimentation — it’s painfully coincidental that Dib was the one to end up under the knife of some careless, curious aliens who probably never even saw Dib as a sentient creature with thoughts, fears, or the capacity to feel pain.

A part of Zim connects those finite pieces of their history and realizes that the Dib experiencing what Zim had once feared made him… sympathetic. Zim tended not to feel sympathy for anyone, least of all his former enemies (except Tak, whose enmity with Zim had been entirely one-sided and, therefore, never really counted). And, wait, was Dib a former enemy, even, or a current enemy, this time fighting for a different, but still contrary, cause? 

Dib walks around the ship with a vacant look in his eyes, and, sometimes, Zim thinks he’s the only one who can see it. Tenn and Tak only care about what he can do for their Empire and — yes, obviously, Zim cares about that, too, but.

Why didn’t Dib want to go back to Earth? Wasn’t he supposed to be the one protecting it?

Seeing Dib alive for the first time in so long had been jarring. Now, he doesn’t even have their old dynamic to rely on. He feels strangely, thinking of Dib, his old enemy, come back into his life against all odds. Who could have anticipated this? Who could know what to do about this? 

Zim shakes his head, trying to push the thoughts away. It wasn’t worth dwelling over, anyway. They would be finished with this mission in just a week’s time, once they arrive at the space station where the vice admiral will be. Then, he can be rid of Dib, and never have to think about him again. Zim shakes his head again, grumbling to himself. He forces himself to look forward at the empty chasm of space ahead of him and just stop thinking. 

Tenn wanders in an hour or two later and sits herself on the dashboard, right where Dib had been. She says nothing at first, just stares intently at Zim’s face. Zim’s gaze dodges between Tenn and the space ahead of him. 

Eventually: “What, Tenn?”

Tenn takes a deep breath.

“What is the Dib-human saying to you?”

Zim feels the tension settle in the room. “He asked me stupid questions and then got mad and left,” he says, refusing to look up at Tenn.

“What was he mad about?”

“I asked him why his skin was all scarred up.”  


“Why did you ask him that?”

“Because I wanted to know.”

“Why did you want to know?” 

“Because — you didn’t see him, before, Tenn. It’s… he’s all messed up! I was curious, okay?”

Tenn nods thoughtfully, and Zim bristles. “Why are you asking me this?”

Tenn puts a gentle hand over Zim’s on the yoke. He takes a breath, closing his eyes and then opening them under Tenn’s watchful gaze.

“Zim,” says Tenn, too quietly. “You don’t need to start this up again.”

“Start what up?” Zim manages through gritted teeth.

He knows, and Tenn knows he knows, and she also knows that he hates hearing her talk about it.

“Zim,” says Tenn quietly. 

“ _I_ didn’t do _anything_!” Zim snaps. “It was Dib!”

“I know,” says Tenn softly.

“ _He_ asked _me_ what was happening!”

“I know he did.”

“I did nothing wrong!”

Tenn squeezes Zim’s hand gently. “I know.”

“Then stop acting like I did!”

“I’m not, Zim. I just wanted to talk.”  


Zim stands abruptly, leaning on the yoke for balance and accidentally tipping the ship sideways for a moment. He rights it, his hand cramping under Tenn’s gentle hold. 

“About what,” he says.

“Zim,” says Tenn, again, because she repeats his name a hundred times in conversations like these, “the Dib-creature is not trustworthy.”

“I know that,” Zim growls.

“He isn’t going to be kind to you for no reason.”

“Maybe he has a reason,” says Zim, betraying himself.

Tenn’s hand moves to Zim’s shoulder and she gives him another squeeze. “If he does, it can’t be a good one.” 

“I know,” says Zim, his voice softening because, well, Tenn’s right. 

Whatever reason Dib has for this sudden kindness can’t be a good one, because Dib has never been genuinely kind, and he has no reason to start now. 

“I know that you used to know him,” says Tenn, and the words are heavy in the air. “And I know that… sometimes… distractions may seem tempting.”

Zim’s face burns at the gentle reminder. 

“They never end well, though, do they?”

He remembers his years in the Dome, seeking dark corners and empty closets, finding someone willing and waiting for something that would be brief, anonymous, and, usually, painful.

“It isn’t your fault, Zim, but it’s time that you learned. This will only hurt you.”

He remembers having his shoulders pushed downward until he falls to his knees, his face being shoved into walls, the feeling of uncaring, impatient hands on him, in him. And it was no one’s fault but his — he sought it out, he knew every time what he was getting himself into as one of the shortest irkens in the Dome. He remembers stumbling to Tenn’s dorm and crawling into her bunk, where she would welcome him and lie with him and listen to him and twirl his antennae through her fingers. He would sigh and try to relax into the imprecise, the almost, the feeling of being cared for, but not in the way that he knew he needed. 

“I know,” he murmurs.

“I’ll always be here for you, Zim,” says Tenn softly.

Zim meets her gaze.

He knows that Tenn is being truthful. He knows that she tries to understand, even as so many unspoken words still hang between them. He takes a breath and feels tired, suddenly, and he wonders when it was, exactly, that he started to feel so exhausted all the time, so drained. 

Tenn pulls him into a brief hug and he wraps his arms around her waist and hooks his chin over her shoulder. She holds the back of his head and squeezes him, briefly, then lets him go.

“Go find Tak,” she says. “I’ll be in here.”

“Okay,” says Zim, feeling overwhelmed, too much all at once, Earth and Dib and the Dome and GIR and drowning.

“If the Dib talks to you again like that,” Tenn calls as he leaves, “just… just think of it like a joke, okay?”

He finds Tak in the kitchen, drinking a soda. He takes it from her.

“Um,” says Tak coolly. “I was drinking that.”

Zim feels the weight of the can — mostly full, he notes. He holds it over Tak’s head and tips it upside-down.

Tak gives a surprised shout, then kicks Zim in the ribs. The pain jolts him awake a little, and he feels less fuzzy, less like he’s being dragged downward. He rights himself, then tackles her to the ground.

**iii.**

The Dib-creature follows Zim around the next few days like a dysfunctional SIR unit, becoming bolder in his comments to Zim, in asking Zim about himself, in paying Zim small, mean compliments. 

“You know, Zim,” Dib says one day, while they’re all in the cockpit, “you almost look like you’ve grown since you were on Earth.”

Zim doesn’t respond, but the comment makes Tenn want to blast the human into deep space.

“Maybe I’m wrong, I know it’s hard to tell since it’s been so long and, you know, obviously _I’m_ not the same height I used to be.” 

“Ow,” Tak whispers, and Tenn remembers that Tak’s antenna is in her hand.

“Sorry,” Tenn whispers back.

The human keeps rambling, the sound of his voice grating on Tenn’s antennae. Eventually, Zim abruptly stands and announces he’ll be going to the kitchen for a snack.

“I’ll come with you,” says Dib, and he follows Zim out the door.

Tenn shifts on Tak’s lap, unable to get comfortable.

“What’s wrong with you?” asks Tak.

“Nothing.”

Tak says nothing as Tenn stands and paces around the cockpit once.

“Should Zim be back by now?”

Tak glances her way. “He probably hasn’t even made it to the kitchen yet. What are you talking about?”

“Maybe I should go check on him.”

“Check on him? He’s getting a snack.”

“Yes, well, the Dib-creature followed him, and is probably antagonizing him—”

“That human antagonizes everyone, what’s your point?”

Tenn keeps pacing, her fists clenched behind her back. “You haven’t noticed? He’s following Zim around and— and— saying things to him, and—”

“He’s probably just bored.” Tak turns back around to face the windshield.

“He’s… well, even if he is just bored, he’s… I don’t want Zim… well.”

Tak meets Tenn’s gaze through the reflection of the windshield. “What do you think is going to happen?”

Tenn clenches her fists harder. 

Tak, technically, isn’t supposed to know so many details of what Zim used to do in the dark closets and hidden corners of the Dome’s underbelly. Zim had told her about one time, but he had only told Tenn about the myriad others. Of course, Tenn knows that Zim isn’t the only one at fault for his indiscretions — it takes two, or sometimes more, to commit that particular transgression. But, still, it’s difficult to hold the weight of his wrongdoings on her own. Tenn hadn’t felt right, exactly, telling Tak, but she’d needed to tell _someone_ , and Tak would never betray her by letting Zim know what she knew. Nor would Tak ever use the information maliciously.

So, Tenn felt most comfortable confiding in Tak, and she’s grateful she did, because, at times like these, it’s helpful to discuss the issue with someone who knows what’s going on.

“You think the Dib-creature is playing with Zim’s feelings?” asks Tak. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” says Tenn, “sabotage? Boredom, like you said? Maybe he just… we know very little about iapetuns, and even less about humans, maybe it’s part of their… hierarchical structure? Maybe it’s normal to… to… well, we don’t know, do we? We don’t know, exactly, what that alien is trying to do, but we both are _well_ aware of what a little attention will do for _Zim_.”

“You don’t give him enough credit,” says Tak, her voice calm. “Zim is not a smeet. He can take care of himself.” 

“He is…”

It hangs in the air. Tenn regrets even beginning to put the thought into words.

“He is sensitive,” she eventually says.

Tak snorts. “Sensitive?”

“Yes, he is quite sensitive, and he sometimes makes poor choices which seem like good ideas at the time and then he regrets them later because he doesn’t always know what’s right for him and sometimes… sometimes we need to… to help him along.”

Tak’s apprehensive look isn’t lost on Tenn, and Tenn shakes her head at it.

“You just haven’t noticed.”

“Haven’t noticed?” repeats Tak. “I’m the only one keeping those two in check half the time! You’re always in here, driving.”

“Well, maybe I should go out and see for myself.”

“Fine,” says Tak, “but I don’t think you’re seeing what you think you’re seeing.”

Tenn crosses her arms. “Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?”

Tak flaps a hand at her. “Go. I’ll stay here.”

Tenn nods, then heads for the door. “Alert me if our Tallest call.”

“Of course.”

Tenn leaves, a little frustrated. She can’t blame Tak for not seeing what’s happening, but, at the same time, it would be nice to have a little support, here. Oh, well. Tenn can manage things fine on her own.

Her suspicions are confirmed when she discovers that Zim had never actually made it to the kitchen and was currently pinned to the wall of the hallway, his eyes wide, the Dib’s form looming over him.

She silently leaps to the ceiling so that she can observe, give Zim the chance, at least, to take care of himself like Tak insists he can. Zim is shrunk against the wall, the Dib-monster’s bound hands raising so that he can lean his palms agains the space just above Zim’s head. The Dib speaks in a low voice, one that she can still hear perfectly — “just wanted to talk for a second without them around, I had the funniest idea about you and me…” and then he slides his knee between Zim’s legs.

“You’re joking,” says Zim weakly.

“I’m really not,” replies the Dib, and Tenn’s seen enough.

She swings to the floor and advances on Dib and Zim — Dib pulls away, his expression shifting from annoyance to surprise as he watches Tenn approach. Tenn shoves him roughly away from Zim, ignoring his protest and the way he stumbles.

“Weren’t you getting a snack?” She asks it like an accusation.

Zim stares back at her, sheepish. “Um. Yes.” 

He darts off. 

“What was that for?”

Tenn’s spooch pounds in her chest as the rage keeps building, so fast and sudden that it sweeps her up. She has the alien by the shirt and is pinning him to the wall before she even realizes it, her PAK legs lifting her into the air so that she’s glaring down at him.

“What are you doing?” she growls.

“I was… talking to Zim,” says the Dib through his teeth. “Get off me.”

“Do not go near him again.”

“You can’t tell me what to—”

Something inside Tenn has taken over. She feels like she’s still just observing as she cocks her fist and bashes the human right in his newly-healed eye.

He shouts in surprise. She kicks him once in the abdomen for good measure, then lets him fall to the floor. She takes a step back and lands quietly on her feet, her PAK legs retreating as she does. The human holds his face and gasps, glaring at her with his unharmed eye.

“Fuck you,” he wheezes.

Tenn approaches, her rage dissipating, if only a small amount, her sense taking over. She can’t kill him, even if she wants to. She can’t even really maim him, not when they’re this close to the target, not when there’s still a deal to be done. 

“I don’t know who you think you are,” she says quietly, “but you will do as I say. Stay away from Zim.”

She takes a step toward the kitchen, then pauses. “Pick yourself up before I come back this way.” 

The Dib stares at her, his face still contorted with rage. She waits a moment, and then he rises, shaky, unbalanced, and begins slouching toward med bay. 

Tenn turns back to the kitchen. Her mind drifts back to Zim — his expression, the way he was so quick to yield, even if he knew that the Dib was weaker than him, disabled by his handcuffs, a mere organic life with no PAK, no power, and still—

She finds him standing in front of the open fridge and crowds him against it, turning him around so he’s facing her. 

“Tenn? Wha—?” 

“ _You_ ,” she growls, the word barely scraping through her teeth, “are _not_ a thing.” 

Zim swallows, his antennae trembling and his eyes wide. 

“Tenn, what are you—?” 

“You do not let anyone else use you and discard you, do you hear me? You are _not. A. Thing._ Do you understand?” 

Zim says nothing but drops his chin in a nod, his brow drawn and high. 

“Good. Go check on the power cores.”

She turns on her heel and leaves Zim behind, his eyes boring into the back of her head as she goes.

Just outside the kitchen, Tak is there, leaning against the wall. Tenn freezes.

“Tak,” she whispers, “what are you doing here?”

“Thought there might be something interesting happening out here. Turns out I was right.”

Tenn bristles, her face flushing with embarrassment. Had Tak heard her lose her temper?

“Well, we need to get back—”

“Did you mean that?” asks Tak, pushing herself off the wall and standing in front of Tenn.

“Mean what?”

Tak gives her a searching look. “That he’s not a thing.” 

Tenn shushes her, then takes her by the shoulders and pushes her backward until she’s sure Zim can’t hear them. “Of course I meant it,” Tenn whispers. “What are you talking about?”

“You think he was made to feel like a thing?” Tak asks, not dropping her voice. Tenn shushes her again, and she frowns. “Those other irkens, made him feel… used? Discarded?”  


“I…” Tenn looks around. She can’t see Zim. “Yes, okay?” she whispers. “That’s what he's said.”

“Do you ever think, sometimes, we are treated that way by the Tallest?”

Tenn’s face goes painfully hot. “What?” she replies in a shrill whisper. “We’ve never had sex with the Tallest. Wait, have you—?!”

Tak huffs. “I didn’t mean— I mean, in general.”

Tenn straightens, her hands dropping from Tak’s shoulders. “No,” she says. “No, I don’t.”

“Tenn,” Tak whispers. “Come on.”

She pushes past Tak and hurries back to the cockpit, where Tak left the ship on autopilot, which she knows Tenn hates. 

Eventually, Tak and Zim join her in the cockpit, both of them quiet. Tenn feels her spooch churning as they sit behind her on the upper deck. She can see in the reflection of the windshield that Tak’s arms are crossed and Zim’s hugging himself, his chin resting on his knees. None of them speak for the rest of the day. Fine, Tenn thinks, if that’s the price she has to pay for doing what needed to be done. They can sit back there in silence all they want. 

**iv.**

Tak leans on one hand and catches her breath. Tenn takes her by the back of the neck and she goes, surging down and pressing their mouths together. She lets her hand coast down Tenn’s bare abdomen and slip between her legs. She inhales every one of Tenn’s little gasps and whimpers, the small, uneven sounds she make as her back arches and her nails dig into Tak’s skin.

It had taken very little convincing for Tak to follow Tenn back to her sleeping pod and shut the door. It had been a hard day for the both of them, and one nervous look from Tenn, a squeak of _are you mad at me?_ and Tak would do anything to reassure her, to help carry the unbearable weight that Tenn holds.

Tak muses as they kiss, thinking about how this was happening just hours after Tenn had so artlessly explained that Zim was… what was the word she’d used? _Sensitive_ , and needed protecting, because he didn’t understand what he was getting himself into, and someone (Tenn) needed to be there to watch out for him.

No one was watching out for Tenn, apparently, because Tenn’s sensitivities are not unlike Zim’s, if the number of times Tenn tugs Tak into her sleeping pod is any indication. Tenn likes to pretend that what they have is okay, that the Tallest — if they knew — wouldn’t get them deactivated for treason. Tenn keeps it from the Tallest because it’s “not worth mentioning,” but Tak knows that, buried under layers and layers of self-deception and repression, Tenn is ashamed of what they do. She knows that it’s not allowed, knows that it’s exactly _this_ that earned Zim his death sentence, but she refuses to believe it.

Tak, on the other hand, knew the moment she laid eyes on Tenn why intimacy was so taboo on Irk. They’d been in the Dome, Tak alone squaring off against Tenn and Zim for the first time. Tenn had emerged with an enflamed whip in one hand and Tak had taken one look at her and was struck by the sudden desire to draw her tongue up the inside of Tenn’s thigh and make her gasp. 

She does it now, because now she can, and the reaction it elicits from Tenn is exactly as sweet as Tak had pictured when she was in the Dome. She’d imagined it so viscerally that she hadn’t even noticed that Tenn was advancing on her until she was wrapped in a fiery bind. She didn’t even care. One look into Tenn’s perfect, pink eyes and Tak knew she’d take the singed antennae if it just meant that she could keep looking. 

Tenn thinks she doesn’t feel this deeper feeling, one that Tak can’t name, but Tak knows she can. She knows because Tenn tells her things she’s not supposed to tell anyone. Tenn wraps her arms around her when no one else is in the cockpit and kisses the underside of her jaw and gives her the last soda, not just shares it with her, like she does with Zim, but _gives_ it to her, the entire can, and if that isn’t… whatever one might call it, Tak doesn’t know what is. 

“What do you want?” Tak whispers, her nails digging into the sensitive skin of Tenn’s waist.

“I want nothing,” Tenn repeats, and Tak tuts with disappointment, “but honor and glory for my Empire.”

It’s something they were taught in academy. Tak knows it’s not true.

“What should I do?” she rephrases, and Tenn tells her.

When she met Tenn, Tak understood why the Control Brains claimed that irkens were solitary species. She drags her hands over Tenn’s body, tastes Tenn over and over again, and she knows exactly why she was taught in academy that irkens don’t bond well. It’s because, if given the choice, Tak would pick Tenn over the Tallest without a second thought. If it were between the future of the Empire and her future with Tenn, there was no choosing at all, really. Tak can admit to herself that it’s that easy. She knows it’s this feeling of certainty, this willingness to see the truth, that makes Tak so useless to the Tallest. She doesn’t care. She’ll spend the rest of her life going on suicide mission after suicide mission, if it means she can keep Tenn with her. And she’ll spend every day trying to convince Tenn to see the truth, too. If she could change anyone’s mind, it would be Tenn’s. Tenn trusts her and believes in her, and, one day, Tenn will become brave enough to see that the whole Empire was built on a lie. 

Tenn is difficult to crack. But, soon, she might be outnumbered.

Tak once thought she’d gotten something out of Zim. It had been the day after a long, grueling, pointless mission, and Tenn was fast asleep in her bunk and Tak and Zim were sitting in the cockpit, saying nothing, barely awake themselves. That’s what Zim had spoken, his voice soft, unfamiliar in its tenderness, its vulnerability. 

“Sometimes, I want,” he’d said. 

Tak had looked over her shoulder at him, surprised, confused, and asked him to elaborate. Zim had just shrugged, as if that were it, that were as far as Zim could go in his poor, confused brain before fear and control took him over. 

_Sometimes, I want_ plays over in Tak’s mind every now and then, and she thinks that, maybe, she can at least get Zim to understand. But, Zim’s never said anything like that again. But, then again, it isn’t always something he needs to say for Tak to hear it. She can tell by the way Zim watches her and Tenn when they’re just sitting together, talking or laughing. She can tell by the way his gaze lingers on Dib, a look of confusion, of… well, wanting, clear on his face.

She knows it confuses Zim, feeling envious over something he can’t quite understand, wanting something — from an alien, no less! — that he had been taught he couldn’t even feel. Tak has to laugh at the fact that Zim’s loneliness, his desperation for companionship had apparently manifested into a strange sympathy for a human he used to know. At the same time, she isn’t particularly sorry that Tenn had punched the thing in the face.

She scoots upward again and covers Tenn’s whining mouth with her own, muffling the sounds as Tenn’s muscles tense, her eyes flutter shut, her hands clench into fists. Tak rubs and presses and jams her tongue into Tenn’s mouth as Tenn rides out her orgasm before finishing with a final, dramatic gasp. 

They pause for a moment, and Tak listens for the sound of Tenn’s spooch pounding against her ribcage, her blood rushing through her veins. Eventually, Tenn’s breathing evens out, and she smiles and rolls them over and pulls Tak’s tunic up over her head. 

Someday, Tak hopes that Tenn could just tell her what she wants. She wants things to be perfect, easy, where both of them understand each other, and themselves. She can’t quite picture it in her mind, though, what it would look like, how different it would be from how it is now. Less frustrating, probably. Less lonely. 

“What are you thinking?” Tenn asks. “Your mind is somewhere else.”

“Nothing,” says Tak, placing a hand on Tenn’s cheek.

“Not nothing.”

Tak grins. “Was thinking about how you busted up the human’s face today.”

Tenn huffs. “He deserved it.”

“Wish I could have seen it.”

Tenn cocks her head. “Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm.” She shuts her eyes. “I’m picturing it now though. It’s thrilling.” 

She opens one eye and sees that Tenn is staring at her, clearly trying to assess if she’s joking or not. She smiles, and Tenn barks out a laugh.

“You’re so weird.”

“You like it.”

“I guess I do.”

Tenn kisses her again, and Tak lets herself drift off to another fantasy — not one where Tenn is punching humans in the face, although, truth be told, she _did_ wish she could have been there for it — but, one where it’s just the two of them, just in this sleeping pod in their little ship with nothing else beyond them, nothing else to worry about, no one but them and Zim in the pilot’s chair, minding his own business and, for once, not getting himself into trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for making dib such a piece of shit chad but i promise there's a light at the end of the tunnel
> 
> also orville peck is making such good yeehaw music i highly recommend if you're into that


	6. A Special Mission, Just for Zim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This tainted love you've given, I give you all a boy could give you. Take my tears, and that's not nearly all.” - Soft Cell 

**i.**

Things are quiet on the ship for the next few days. The Dib-human all but disappeared after the incident in the hallway, although Zim could still hear him skulking around every now and then, sneaking in and out of the bathroom and the kitchen. Tak and Tenn were on some joint mission to keep Zim in their sight at all times, which was annoying, but not necessarily unwelcome. With Dib around less, Zim was starting to get antsy.

He still sparred with Tak occasionally, although he kept losing focus. His mind kept drifting to what Tenn had said.

It grated on him, a little, that she would throw that in his face — things he had only said to her in confidence, at a low point, things he would never say now. He wasn’t even sure how true they were, or if he’d ever really felt… well. Like she’d said. Zim shakes his head and draws his knees up. He hates that Tenn had to remind him of being in the Dome. He hates Dib for whatever he was trying to pull before. He hates Tak, too, a little, not for any real reason but just because it feels unfair to leave her out. He’ll think of something.

Tenn is driving and Tak is doing some maintenance on the control panel in the power room when Dib shuffles into the cockpit. He sits down on the upper deck beside Zim with a huff and says nothing.

Zim peers at him. He looks — less good than Zim remembers. His hair is a mess on top of his head and his face is hairy at the jawline and around his mouth. His lips are pale and, as he stares forward, Zim can see that his eye— wait. 

“Dib-creature,” he says. “Your eye is purple. Again.”

“Got punched.”

Zim’s eyes narrow. He thought he’d heard a scuffle after Tenn had sent him to the kitchen, but… had she…?

“That’s cool,” says Zim, reeling as he stares at the swollen, discolored skin around Dib’s eye. 

His eyes drift downward and he glances at Dib’s wrists, rubbed raw from his cuffs. The skin looks infected and irritated.

“Just a day left,” says Tenn from the pilot’s chair.

“A day left until what?” asks Zim, still distracted.

“Until we make the trade, of course,” says Tenn. “One day, and then the human will hand over his vice admiral, and then we take him back home and watch him get fed to one of the beasts in the Dome. Won’t that be fun?”

“Oh. Yeah,” says Zim. 

Right. That will be fun. He hasn’t been home in a long time.

Dib stands and approaches Tenn. He pulls something from his pocket.

“I drew up a map of the facility we’re headed to.” Zim watches Dib place a piece of paper in front of Tenn and point to it. “Lobo’s office is here. He should be there by the time we arrive, but we’ll need to scan the area first and make sure. If not, we’ll have to wait. If you can intercept any signals coming from the station, that would help. If he’s there, he probably won’t have security guards with him, but there might be other personnel there. So we’ll have to be careful of that.”

“You drew this?” Tenn asks, leaning forward. She flips over the piece of paper. Zim can only see the back of her head, and her antennae bob in amusement. “On an old wrapper from one of our snacks. How quaint. Did you fish this out of the garbage?”

She turns her head to shoot Dib a mean smile. Dib looks away.

“Yeah,” he says, and Zim cocks his head at the raspy, weak sound of his voice. “Thought it might help.”

Dib turns and walks back toward the door. 

“You know,” Tenn calls, looking over her shoulder at Dib, who pauses. “We just might miss you around here. I was almost getting used to the vile way you smell. And I only just realized a few days ago how fun you were to smack around.” 

Dib says nothing, just turns back and heads for the door. He pauses when he catches Zim’s eye, though, and he meets Zim’s gaze with a look of — Zim can’t even place it. Dib’s expression looks sad, yes, pathetic, but also… somehow, empty. He looks hopeless. 

Zim turns to watch Dib head through the door. When he turns back around, Tenn was watching him.

“You did that?” he asks. 

“I did what needed to be done,” says Tenn.

Frustration nips at him. “I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.”

“You weren’t going to do it.”

“Maybe I was.”

“And maybe I’m a table-headed service drone. Be thankful, Zim.”

Zim hugs his legs and rests his chin on his knees. He glares at the back of Tenn’s head and thinks that he doesn’t feel thankful at all, just annoyed that, technically, Tenn had been right — the Dib clearly wasn’t being nice for the sake of being nice, and Zim clearly wasn’t going to do anything to protect himself from it, and, well, it was what needed to be done. Zim chews his lip. He still just… doesn’t understand why he couldn’t have been the one to do it. 

A ringing sound fills the cockpit. Zim and Tenn jump at the sound.

Tenn presses the intercom button on the control panel. “Tak! Our Tallest are calling.”

“Be there in a minute,” comes Tak's reply. 

Zim and Tenn look at each other. “They’re calling now, Tak,” Zim says.

“I’ll get there when I get there! I’m in the middle of something.” 

Tenn’s eyes go wide and Zim just shakes his head. The ringing continues. Tenn answers the call.

“Greetings, my Tallest,” they say in unison, rising from their seats and saluting. 

Their Tallest are lounging on the couch in the middle of the bridge, drinking sodas. 

“Hey, guys,” says Tallest Purple. His eyes drift to the screen, and he sits upright. “Wait. Where is Agent Tak?”

“She’s on her way, my Tallest,” says Tenn. “She is making repairs, um, and—”

“Oh, well, if she’s making repairs,” says Tallest Purple. “We don’t care! Get her in here.”

“I will fetch her, my Tallest!” Zim shouts, and he sprints for the door. 

“Tak!” he shouts, sprinting down the hall toward the power room. “Tak! Tallest!!”

Her head pops into view, and then she steps out from the power room. Zim skids to a halt.

“Our Tallest have called, and they wish to speak with you.”

“Great,” says Tak, her voice flat.

Zim takes her by the wrist. “It’s not polite to keep our Tallest waiting, Tak, come _on_!” 

“I’m coming, Zim, relax,” grunts Tak, but she lets him lead her at his briskest walk back to the cockpit.

“I have Tak, my Tallest!” he announces as they step through the door.

“That’s great,” says Tallest Red.

There’s a moment of silence in the cockpit.

Tak sighs. “Greetings, my Tallest,” she says, pounding her chest weakly and wiggling her antennae a little. 

Zim feels himself blush at the lack of commitment to the salute. Their Tallest say nothing and stare at Tak.

“Greetings, Special Agent Tak,” says Tallest Purple eventually. “Thank you for honoring us with your presence.”

“The same to you, my Tallest.”

Tallest Red narrows his eyes. “Mhm. Anyway, now that that’s taken care of, we have a mission for you.”

There’s another short pause. Zim blinks. Another mission? They hadn’t even finished this one.

“We… we are still completing this mission, my Tallest,” says Tenn weakly. “We expect to be finished trading the captain for the vice admiral in a day.”

“No time for that!” Tallest Purple snaps. “We have something much, much, _much_ , more important!”

“You do?” Tenn squeaks.

“We do, indeed,” says Tallest Red. “It’s a special mission.” His gaze shifts away from Tenn. “Just for Zim.”

Zim freezes under Tallest Red’s stare. “A… special mission?” he manages. “For Zim?”

“That’s right, Zim,” says Tallest Red. “This one’s just for you, no one else. And it’s very, _very_ important.”

Zim’s blood starts to race. He bounds toward the dashboard.

“Yes!” he shouts. “Yes, yes, of course, my Tallest! Please, tell me the mission! Tell me right now, my Tallest, and I will execute it perfectly, just as you tell me to! Thank you, my Tallest, so much, for this mission, I will not let you down—”

“That’s great, Zim,” says Tallest Purple. “We’re glad to hear it. Your mission is this: you must retrieve a rock.”

Zim nods. Okay. Retrieve a—

“A rock?” asks Tak. 

“Yes, Tak,” says Tallest Purple. “Zim will retrieve a rock.”

Zim hesitates. “Any rock, my Tallest, or did you have something specific in mind?”

“Oh, we had something very specific in mind,” says Tallest Red. “A _special_ rock.”

“Right,” adds Tallest Purple. “A special rock.”

“My Tallest,” Tenn pipes up, “if I may just… er, cut in for a moment… we are just a day away from capturing an enemy who could be extremely useful to you—”

“Rock first,” says Tallest Red. 

Tenn shrinks back. “Of course, my Tallest,” she mumbles.

“What’s the rock!?” Zim shouts, unable to contain himself. 

Tallest Red signals to an irken off-camera, and an image appears alongside the video screen. It’s a rock, alright. Zim can’t tell how large it is, but it’s a blindingly bright magenta color, shiny and smooth. Zim doesn’t understand the significance of it. He cocks his head to the side.

“A magnificent rock, my Tallest! If I may ask, what is it for?” 

“You may not ask,” says Tallest Red. “It’s secret and, eh, very important. Go find it.”

“How large is this rock, my Tallest?” asks Tak.

“Oh, I dunno,” says Tallest Purple. “I think, like, the size of a piece of popcorn.”

“Where can we find this rock, my Tallest?” Tak asks. “Won’t it be time-consuming to locate something so small?”

“Not at all, Special Agent Tak,” says Tallest Purple. “In fact, it should be very easy to find.”

“It’s located on a planet in the Spork Galaxy of the Delta Sector. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

Zim hasn’t. He looks to Tenn and Tak, and Tak looks as confused as he does, but Tenn’s face pales. 

“Planet Salt, my Tallest?” she asks weakly.

“That’s the one.”

“Wait, what?” asks Tak. “What is Planet Salt?”

His Tallest motion to the off-screen irken again, and the picture changes to a barren, white wasteland.

“Planet Salt,” says Tallest Red. “Formerly an ocean planet, all of the water evaporated schmillions of years ago when it was knocked off its orbit and nearly collided with its sun. Now, it’s just a hot, salty ball… of salt.”

Zim feels his spooch drop. He tries not to show his fear. “The rock is there, my Tallest?”

His Tallest both grin at him. “Uh huh,” says Tallest Red. “Right there, and yours for the taking, Zim.”

Zim zones out for a second, staring at the image on the screen.

“Do you accept your mission, Zim?”

“Of course, my Tallest,” he says, shaking his head. “Of course! I will make you proud, my Tallest!” 

“We know you will,” says Tallest Purple. 

“We expect you to complete this mission with the utmost haste, Zim,” says Tallest Red. “It’s a very special mission. One we picked out, just for you.”

“I cannot wait, my Tallest! I will have this rock in no time, and you will—”

“That’s great, Zim,” says Tallest Purple, waving a hand. 

The screen goes black.

The cockpit fills with silence.

“Well!” says Zim, turning to the other two, his hands on his hips. “How about that!”

Tenn is facing him, gripping the dashboard. Tak stares through the windshield. 

“Congratulations, Zim,” says Tenn quietly. “It’s clearly very important to our Tallest that you complete this mission.”

“Thank you! I agree!” says Zim. “Once we retrieve this rock, they will be thrilled! With me!” 

Tenn just nods. Zim feels a pang of sympathy.

“And then we will complete _your_ mission, of course,” he adds. “I’m sure it’s also very important that we capture the vice admiral.”

“You think so?”

“Of course!”

Tenn shakes herself a little. “You’re right. This was… this mission for you was probably just a priority. A timing thing, I'm sure. And I know where Salt is, we aren’t too far away. Once we fix up the energy cores, we can get there in a couple of days, and then we’ll be back on track!”

“Absolutely!” says Zim, and he matches Tenn’s smile with his own.

They both look to Tak. She’s still staring out the windshield.

“Zim,” she says softly. “You can’t do this.”

“What do you mean?” asks Zim. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Tak repeats. She finally looks at him. “You’ll die.”

“Oh, come on,” says Zim. “That’s an exaggeration.”

“Did you not hear them?” asks Tak. “It’s a planet… made _entirely_ of salt. It’ll kill you the second you beam down there.”

“No, it won’t,” says Zim, his antennae flattening. “I’ll be fine.”

“Zim, you’ll _die_. A normal PAK can’t process that much salt in the atmosphere, on the ground, and yours…” she trails off and looks away.

“My PAK _is_ normal,” Zim snaps. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing!” says Tak. “I just mean… Zim, come on. You know what salt does to irkens.”

Yes, he does. He knows that salt is the only weakness that Irk has yet to breed out of its people. It corrodes irken PAKs and skin. Irken technology is just as vulnerable to the stuff as the irkens themselves, especially this ship, which was made from metals mined only on Irk. Invaders and soldiers alike have died from exposure in droves when attempting to take over certain planets. Engineers have tried to develop tech that would withstand it and died each time they tested it. It was one of the reasons why Irk started trading tech with Vort in the first place. But, this ship wasn’t made with vortian metals. It was purely irken and completely vulnerable. Zim shudders.

“I’ll be fine,” he says.

“You’ll die,” Tak says, this time more forcefully. She advances on Zim. “You’ll be destroyed. Is that what you want?”

“I want glory for my Empire and my Tallest!” Zim barks. “And I will go to this salty planet and retrieve this rock if that’s what it takes!”

Tak’s head whips around, and she meets Tenn’s gaze.

“You can’t let him do this,” she says.

“I’m right here!” Zim yells. “And I received a direct order from my Tallest to retrieve their special rock for _my_ special mission!”

“Tenn…”

“I’m doing it!” shouts Zim.

Tak turns back to glare at him.

“No, you’re not!”

“Yes, I am!”

“Tenn!”

“ _Tenn_!”

Tenn steps forward and stands between them. She takes a breath and looks at Tak.

“He’s doing it.”

“ _WHAT_?” 

“See!” Zim shouts. “Tenn gets it!”

“Tenn, this is insane—”

“He’s doing it,” says Tenn, her voice forceful. “Our Tallest have assigned him the mission. He’s going to do it.”

“He’ll die!”

“I’ll be _fine_!” Zim shrieks. “I’ve died before, haven’t I? And I’m fine now!”

Tak’s gaze locks onto Zim. “You think you’re fine?”

Zim puffs his chest out. “I know I am. I can handle it. I’m doing the mission, whether you like it or not, Tak.” He puts his hands on his hips. “And, you know, I’m starting to suspect that you’re actually just jealous, anyway. Wishing that our Tallest assigned the mission to _you_ , are you? Angry that I’ll be the one getting all the glory and praise?” 

Tak looks enraged. She shoves Tenn aside and approaches Zim until they’re toe to toe.

“You know what?” she growls. “Fine. Go get that stupid pebble. Die, while you’re at it. See if I care.”

Zim glares right back.

“I will,” he says. 

Tak glares at him for another few moments, and he glares right back at her. Eventually, Tenn steps between them again.

“Enough of this,” she says. “Tak, go tell the prisoner we’re taking a detour. Zim, go check the power cores. We’ll need all the energy possible to protect our ship from the salt.”

“Fine,” says Tak. 

She storms away.

“Sounds great,” says Zim, and he storms after her.

They say nothing as they part ways, and Zim shakes his head, trying to calm down. He decides to daydream a little about how pleased his Tallest will be when he shows them the rock. They’ll be so happy, he thinks. They’ll be chanting his name and applauding him and maybe they’ll rename a whole galaxy after him. He stands at the control panel in the power room and closes his eyes, imagining his Tallest cheering for him, maybe giving him a prize, like a seat at the Dome. It would all be worth it, he tells himself, even as a feeling of dread begins to seep over his skin. 

**ii.**

They’re back in Tak’s sleeping pod, because Tenn’s appetites are boundless when she’s feeling sorry for herself.

“I just don’t understand why they couldn’t have waited a few days. We could have captured the vice admiral and delivered him to an outpost in no time. Why is the rock so important now?” 

“Yeah, I don’t know,” says Tak. “Seems pretty random.”

“It does seem quite random, doesn’t it?” asks Tenn. She bites her lip after she says it, and her eyes dart to Tak. “Maybe it just seems random to us, though, because of our inferiority. Our Tallest work in mysterious ways.”

Tak stares at the ceiling of her pod and wraps an arm around Tenn’s shoulders, pulling her closer. “Yup.”

Tenn sits up a little, and Tak can see that the flush on her face goes all the way down her neck. “We shouldn’t speak ill of our Tallest,” she whispers.

“We weren’t,” says Tak.

“Right. Right, you’re right. We were just talking.”

She lies back down and snuggles against Tak. 

They don’t say anything for a while, just lie together in silence. They’ve been “napping” for almost an hour now, and it was probably about time they got up and moving. Tak knows that Tenn still doesn’t trust the Dib-human not to try and get his grubby paws on Zim again, and Tak kind of agrees. She’d overestimated Zim’s power of will, apparently.

She can almost feel that Tenn is about to suggest that they get dressed and get up, so she takes her last opportunity.

“Don’t send Zim out there,” she whispers.

“I have to,” says Tenn. “Our Tallest ordered it.”

Tak sits up. Tenn follows. 

“Send me. The Tallest don’t have to know. I’ll do it. My PAK’s better. Zim doesn’t have to.”

Tenn’s eyes narrow in confusion. “He wants to. Why don’t you want him to do it? Are you… are you really jealous?”

“No, I’m not jealous,” Tak says with an exasperated sigh. “I’m just… I just don’t want to see him get hurt.”

“He’ll be fine,” says Tenn. “He’s tougher than he looks.”

Tak peers at Tenn. “I thought he was ‘sensitive’?”

“Well,” says Tenn. She shakes her head. “I mean, he’s tougher with mission stuff. Physical stuff. Come on, how many times has he nearly died doing one thing or another? He’s not going to break.”

“Well, isn’t he?” asks Tak. “You say that he’s sensitive, don’t you think that might have something to do with all of those times he nearly died? Or, what about the time he _did_ die?”

“He was reactivated later that day,” says Tenn. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has to do with… doesn’t he… don’t you think he’s not the same as he used to be?” 

“I don’t know what you mean.” 

Tak sits back on her hands. “I barely even knew him before I saw him in the Dome. You’ve known him your whole life. After the incident with the cancri, he… he changed. Don’t you think so?”

Tenn appears to genuinely, truly ponder this. “No,” she eventually says. “He’s Zim. He’s always been Zim.”

“He’s quieter.”

“He’s older. He’s not some smeet or adolescent that needs constant validation—” 

Tak huffs out a laugh at that. 

“I mean it,” says Tenn. “Maybe what you’re seeing is that he’s just gotten a little more mature. He’s calmed down a little, that’s all.”

“Or, maybe, all those fights in the Dome and all those missions with us have taken a toll on him.”

“What, you mean on his PAK? I think there might be something wrong with the processing capacity, but I don’t think—”

“Not… not a technical issue. I mean… I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s good that he’s had… that he’s had such a life.”

Tenn’s gaze is steady, and Tak can tell that she’s taking the role of the caring, logical leader. “His life isn't much different from ours, and we're fine," she says. "He likes his life. He is happy to serve our Tallest.”

“You think he’s happy?”

Tenn looks taken aback. “He _is_ happy.”

Tak wrings her hands a little and decides to try again. “Will you just, for me, for my peace of mind, have Zim sit this one out? I haven’t done a mission in a while, so I’ve had plenty of time to recover.”

“I don’t think so,” says Tenn quietly. “We have to do as our Tallest say.”

“They won’t know. Zim can have all the praise, I’ll just be the one to get the rock. As far as they’re concerned, we’ll do exactly as they asked.”

“No, Tak,” says Tenn. “Our Tallest requested Zim. Zim’s doing it, and that’s final.”

Tak’s eyes narrow. “Says who?”

“Says me,” Tenn replies, her voice hardening a little.

“Well, maybe we shouldn’t just blindly do whatever _you_ say.”

“Maybe you actually _are_ jealous,” says Tenn, incredulous.

“I’m not jealous,” says Tak. “I don’t even want the recognition for it. I’m just saying, if we get the rock, the Tallest won’t care who did it.”

“They said the mission was special, just for Zim. They said that specifically.”

“We’ll tell them Zim did it.”

“Tak, no. We're not lying to them.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I said—”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t get to say!” Tak snaps. “Maybe letting Zim do this is a bad idea. And maybe dragging that stupid human on board and making a deal with him, even though he’s shown no sign of being trustworthy, was also a bad idea!”

“I don’t care if you think it’s a bad idea!” hisses Tenn. 

“Well, maybe you should!” Tak snaps. “I’m the tallest one of our group! Maybe if I say I’m doing the mission, you should just say, ‘yes, my Taller,’ and maybe that should be that!”

Tenn says nothing for a moment, just stares at her. The pod is silent, and the silence stretches on for an uncomfortable period of time. Eventually, Tenn laughs.

“Oh, really, Tak?” she asks, and Tak flinches at her tone. “You’d like the run things around here, would you? Do you even know what you’re saying?”

Tak doesn’t want to go any farther into this than she already has, but Tenn’s question frustrates her. 

“Yeah, so what if I do?”

“Unbelievable.” Tenn feels around in the pod until she eventually finds her pants. She yanks them on. “You know, I spend all day taking care of the both of you, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Taking care? Of us? What are you even talking about?”  


There’s fire in Tenn’s eyes, but she looks away to pull on her undershirt. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe making sure that Zim isn’t being molested by that freak in med bay, and making sure that you don’t give him the wrong ideas about our Tallest, and—”

“You were the one who put that freak in med bay! You’re the reason he’s here!”

“To make our Tallest proud!”

“To make yourself look good!”

“How dare you?!”

“And, my ideas aren’t wrong about the Tallest!” Tak barks. “You’re just too blind to see it. You’re so blind, in fact, that you insist on getting Zim killed just because you want to make them happy!”

“So what if he gets killed?” shouts Tenn. “We’ll get him reactivated! Why is this such a big deal?”

“I said why!” Tak yells. “I said why, you just can’t allow yourself to have one, single feeling, so you can’t understand what I’m talking about!”

Tenn glares at her. She slaps the cover of the pod, and it springs open. “I have feelings,” she says, her voice low.  


“Well,” Tak says, “you could have fooled me.”

“I do, too. You need to grow up, Tak. Stop living in your fantasy land where everyone’s out to get you, and stop trying to shove your stupid conspiracies down everyone’s throats.”

Tenn gets out and storms out of their dorm. Tak watches her go, her hands balled into fists.

She made sure that Tenn and Zim were both busy working on the power core when she pressed her hand on the “call” button.

The Tallest appear. 

“Oh,” says Tallest Purple. “What, Tak?”

Tak salutes. “My Tallest,” she says, her eyes on the floor, “I come with a request.”

“And what’s that?” asks Tallest Purple.

“Please, my Tallest, allow me to fetch the rock in Zim’s stead.”

She looks up. The Tallest are staring at her.

“Oh, really?” asks Tallest Red, frowning. “Why should we?”

“My Tallest,” says Tak, “I have… not been given the opportunity to prove my devotion to you in so long. I would like the chance, please.”

“Hmm,” says Tallest Red. “Not buying it. Try again.”

“My Tallest, Zim’s PAK has not properly adjusted to its most recent upgrade, and I fear that exposure to the salt will prevent him from being able to complete the mission properly. My PAK functions perfectly, so I would be more suited—”

“Don’t think so. Try again.”

“My Tallest—”

“You know, Tak,” says Tallest Purple. “I think I’d like to hear you address us by our full title now.”

Tak sighs, but nods. “My All-Powerful, All-Knowing, Almighty Tallest, I beg of you, please allow me to complete this mission instead of Zim.”

“Do it again,” says Tallest Purple. “On your knees, this time.” 

Tak pauses. Is this a test of some sort?

“Irkens do not live on our knees,” she says weakly.

It’s an old saying, one they’re taught in academy. _Irkens die on their feet before they live on their knees._ She takes another shaking breath.

“You do for us, Tak,” says Tallest Purple, his voice quiet. “You’re smart enough to know that.”

Tak drops to her knees. She asks again, uses their full title, wiggles her antennae to display her trust. The Tallest watch her.

“You know he’ll do it,” she says quietly, “and you know he’ll die if he does.”

“If he dies, take him to the nearest medical station and have him reactivated again.” 

“Please, my Tallest,” begs Tak, her hands clasped in front of her. “Allow me to retrieve the rock.”

There’s more silence, and the Tallest look at each other, then look at her. 

“Tak,” says Tallest Red, “you know we don’t care about that stupid rock.”

The transmission cuts, and the screen goes black, then fades, so that the light of the stars shines into the cockpit. Tak takes one more shaking breath and stands up. 

**iii.**

They arrive on Planet Salt a few days later. The trip had been fairly silent: Zim and Tak weren’t speaking to each other, the Dib-creature had emerged from his room to ask if it was true that they were taking a detour and then disappeared again when Tenn confirmed it, and Tenn — well, Tenn was talking to Zim, and that was about it.

She can’t help but be angry with Tak. Who did Tak think she was? Before they’d captured the human, Tak had been more than happy to follow Tenn’s lead. Why did she think she deserved to be in charge now? Because she was taller? Because their Tallest appeared to favor her? 

Tenn sits in the captain’s chair, alone, and crosses one knee over the other. She huffs.

Sure, it technically made sense for Tak to be in charge because she was, technically, taller. But she had always been comfortable deferring to Tenn’s leadership. Tenn was the strategic mind of the three of them, she was the one who made plans and kept things organized and could make difficult decisions! She didn’t let her emotions get in her way like Tak and Zim did. She was objective, and reasonable, and… and…

Tenn shakes her head. There’s no use dwelling on it. It’s not productive. The point is, Tak is questioning her leadership. She knows what that means.

It means that, if this gets in the way of their missions, she’ll have to report to the Tallest for a final decision on who’s in charge. They’ll almost certainly pick Tak. And, Tenn doesn’t want them to, but if she has to, if the missions are jeopardized because Tak is questioning her leadership, undermining her authority… she’ll have to. 

Tenn swallows. She doesn’t even want to think of what will happen if Tak takes charge. She’ll probably try to do something insane, like disable their communications system and run away from Irk. Or, maybe, she won’t. Maybe all this talk about their Tallest is just Tak’s way of undercutting Tenn. Maybe she’s trying to get Zim to side with her, convince him to be loyal to only her, and not to Tenn, and then the two of them will abandon Tenn on some orphan planet and go off together, without her.

No. No, they wouldn’t do that. Would they?

Maybe they would. Not long ago, Tenn had been walking down the hall and peeked through the window in the door to the cockpit to see Tak having a private call with their Tallest. She’d run off, afraid that their Tallest would spot her, but the sight had gutted her. Tak had private chats with their Tallest? Why? And for how long?

She would have to tell their Tallest that Tak had tried to go against their orders. It could get Tak deactivated.

The very thought brings tears to Tenn’s eyes. She pushes it down, takes a deep breath, and forces herself to think of something else. She doesn't have to worry about this right now. Just focus on the rock.

She looks out the windshield. She sees the bright, white planet. They’re almost there. She presses a finger to the intercom button.

“Entering Salt’s atmosphere in fifteen minutes. Report to the cockpit at that time.”

When she enters the atmosphere, she can feel it. Irken salt sensitivity is one of their people’s best-kept secrets, and they’d been careful not to speak of how dangerous Zim’s mission was going to be in front of the human. The mere thought of all that salinity makes her skin feel like its being scraped away under her clothes. She shudders, then slows the ship down. She swipes a few settings on the control panel and the screen on the windshield zooms in until she gets a clear view of the ground below.

It’s terrifying. The salt is white and stark in the light of this galaxy’s hot, close sun. The texture of the salt is rippled, like the waves of an ocean, but there is no ocean. No water to dilute the potency of the salt. Just pure, dangerous salt. Tenn feels like it’s seeping into her bones, even though she, Tak, and Zim had worked tirelessly the past few days to make sure that the energy cores were working. The shields weren’t at one hundred percent, but they were close, and the air purifying system was working overtime, the system grinding within the walls of the ship. 

Tak and Zim appear separately, Zim already suited up in an outfit made of a special purple material which should protect him from the corrosion. He has special boots on, too, which should help him adjust to the gravity of the planet below them and protect his feet from the ground that he’ll be walking on. Zim has a communicator stuck to the side of his head, so they'll be able to talk while he's down there.

“Okay?” asks Tenn. “Are you ready? You have your helmet on?”

Zim presses a button on the front of his suit and a translucent shield forms over his head, then disappears. 

“I’m ready,” he says. 

His voice shakes a little.

Tenn puts a hand on his shoulder. “Our Tallest will be very pleased with you,” she says, and Zim smiles, his shoulders releasing some of their tension.

“Let’s get this over with,” says Tak.

Tenn turns back to the controls and sits down.

Their scan of the planet’s surface takes some time but, eventually, they find what they’re looking for. The rock is tiny and bright pink and it has to be what their Tallest wanted.

When Tenn straightens, her head swims. She’s sweating already and her PAK is making a soft, subtle clicking sound, protesting her increasing blood pressure. She hates to admit it, but Tak’s right. They need to hurry up and get this over with. She turns back to Tenn and Zim and they’re watching her. Tak looks as bad as Tenn feels, but Zim looks significantly better, which is good. He should be okay to beam down to the planet, grab the rock, and beam back up.

He’ll be fine, she reminds herself. And, even if he’s not fine now, he’ll be fine later. She looks at Zim and Tak’s words echo through her head. 

“I’m ready to go,” says Zim. 

He _is_ calmer. Quieter. Tenn assumed that was just because they were older, now, done growing, done with training. Tak’s worries, that something was wrong, that Zim’s experiences had made him more subdued — Tenn didn’t want to think about it. Because that would mean that she was responsible, at least partly, and that would be unthinkable.

“Let’s go, then,” she says, and she sets the ship to hover over the spot, and they walk out of the cockpit and into the transport room together.

Tak says nothing as Zim steps onto the transport pad. He gives a nod, and Tenn beams him down.

She has her tablet in front of her with a view of Zim from one of the ship’s external cameras, and she watches Zim’s body reform on the surface of Salt. 

“Okay, Zim?” she asks in to the control panel. 

She hears nothing but labored breathing from the other end of the line.

“Zim?” she asks again.

“Okay,” says Tak quickly. “Beam him back up.”

“He hasn’t done anything yet,” Tenn whispers. “He’s just standing there.”

More breathing, though it sounds less like actual breaths and more like desperate gasps, like the sound of someone struggling to keep their head above water.

“Get him up here!” Tak barks. 

“No!” Tenn screams. “I’m the one in charge! I’ll transport him when he gets the rock!”

She leans toward the microphone embedded in the control panel. “Zim!” she cries. “Get the fucking rock! Now!” 

Zim falls to the ground, and Tenn can see that the bottom of his boots have been completely eroded by the salt. The bottoms of his feet are raw and bleeding.

“GRAB IT NOW!” she howls, and she can just see Zim’s hand falling over the flash of pink on the ground and closing into a fist.

She beams him up.

Instantly, she feels like she’s suffocating. Zim’s body crumples to the floor of the transport pad, and the air around him is thick with hot, salty air. Her eyes are burning and her tongue is on fire and her skin feels like it’s peeling off her face. 

“Get him,” she gasps, and Tak lunges forward. 

She lifts Zim into the air and they hustle out of the transport room and into the hallway. The air outside the transport room is clearer, and the more they move away from it, the more the pain starts to feel like discomfort. Tak sprints with Zim in her arms to the med bay, and Tenn follows. 

“Move!” Tak shouts, and the human, who had been lying on the bed, leaps aside.

“What happened?” he asked. His eyes land on Zim’s prone form, his singed antennae, his crusty, damaged skin, exposed through holes in his suit where he landed when he fell. “Is he okay?”

“Shut up!” Tak barks. “Get out of my way!”

Tak drops Zim onto the bed and begins pulling medical supplies out of the drawers and cabinets, setting up an intravenous drip and pulling out bandages and disinfectant. Tenn sits him up and disengages his helmet. She lets a coil snake out of one of the compartments of her PAK and attach to Zim’s. It’s enough to reset him, and his eyes pop open and he gasps once, then vomits a fountain of dark purple blood all over himself.

“Shit,” Tak murmurs, and Tenn can hear that her voice is unsteady.

“He’s okay,” says Tenn quietly. “He’ll be fine.”

Donating some of her PAK energy to Zim is draining, but Tenn waits until Tak sets up a generator. She disengages with Zim and watches Tak’s shaking hands attach the generator's cable to a port on the top of Zim’s PAK. Zim takes heaving, uneven breaths. Tenn lays him back down.

“Is he gonna be okay?” asks the human from the corner of the room. 

“He’ll be fine,” says Tenn.

She meets Tak’s gaze and sees tears pouring down Tak’s face. Tak looks down at Zim and puts a gentle hand on his head.

“He’ll be fine,” Tenn repeats, softer this time. 

Tak straightens and wipes angrily at her face. “Like you care,” she says with a sniffle. 

Tenn ignores that jab, even if it makes her cheeks burn. She presses a hand to his forehead.

“You’re gonna be okay, Zim,” she says softly.

Zim makes a croaking sound, then weakly lifts his hand. He unclenches his fist, revealing a shining, pink rock.

“I got it,” he says, his voice raspy and weak.

“Good job, Zim,” says Tenn quietly. “Congratulations.”

Tak bursts into tears and rushes out of the room.


	7. Bedrest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I'm guessing that I've grown horns. I guess I'm human no more. I can tell I've rotted in your brain.” - Dodie 

**i.**

Tenn stands in the doorway. She’s so close to cracking.

“Well, what _do_ you want?” she asks.

“Where’s Tak?” asks Zim.

“For the hundredth time,” says Tenn with a sigh, “Tak is busy. The ship is barely holding together with all of the damage it took on Salt. She’s trying to get the control panel functioning again so we can actually see how many of the power cores are down.”

“Why don’t you do that and she can come in here?”

Tenn sighs again, then thunks her head on the doorframe. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you for this long, Zim. I have other work I need to do, and that human is still… somewhere, I don’t even know, I should… I have to go, okay? I came in to offer you a drink and check your vitals. That’s it.” 

Zim shifts into an upright position and immediately regrets it. His vision, already blurry and spotty, worsens, and he feels like the ship just tipped itself sideways and then righted itself again. He heaves a couple of times, then jumps at the feeling of Tenn’s hand on his shoulder.

“Lie back down,” she says, and her voice is calm again. "You should go back to sleep."

“Don’t touch me!” he snaps, but Tenn eases him backward until his head hits the too-soft mattress of the bed. 

He tries to scramble away from her touch, but he can’t make it far. His PAK is hooked up to an energy generator and his arms are stuck with IVs. His efforts to move make him dizzy again, and his head flops to the side so he can stare at Tenn.

“Let me up,” he says. 

Tenn laughs at him. 

“You can’t turn your head without dry heaving. You’re not getting up.”

“I need to call our Tallest,” he says. “I need to show them the… the…”

The stone. Where was it? Didn’t he just have it?? _Where was it_!?

“It’s right here,” says Tenn smoothly, plucking the stone off of the bedside table. She places it in Zim’s palm and closes his fingers over it. “You’ll show it to them when you start feeling better, okay? Comms are down right now, anyway.”

“Why?” asks Zim.

“Because, when we were on Salt—”

“Why haven’t you fixed it?” 

“We’re working on it, we just—”

“Our Tallest need to see that I completed my mission! Against all odds, I even survived it! Why aren’t you working on it right now?”

Tenn blinks, and Zim can see the annoyance set back in. Good.

“I’m talking to you.”

“Why are you in here, wasting both of our time, when our Tallest don’t even know that _this_ —” he shoves the stone into her face, nearly smacking her with it as she jolts backward “—is in our possession?”

“I wasn’t planning on—”

“On what! Bothering me so much? I clearly need my rest, why are you in here complaining to me when you should be helping Tak, hmm?”

Tenn crosses her arms and takes a step back. “Okay. No soda, then?”

“Get out!” Zim wails, with all the energy he can muster. He reaches for the first thing he can find — a half-eaten sandwich on his bedside table — and flings it at her head. It misses by a significant margin and splats against the wall by the door, then lands on the floor. “And clean that up!”

“Fine,” growls Tenn through her teeth. “I’m going, you ingrate.”

“Send Tak in!”

“She’s _busy_!” 

“I don’t care!”

Tenn screams, very quietly and with her mouth closed, then storms out of the room, promising Zim as she goes that she won’t bother him again. Zim watches the ceiling and waits for her to come back. 

Tenn doesn’t come back. Instead, Zim’s awoken by a tentative knock on the doorframe and a human holding up a can of soda.

Zim squints, just to make sure he’s seeing what he’s seeing. It’s the Dib-human, alright. 

“What do you want.”

“Uh,” says the human, “I don’t know? I thought you might want a drink or something.”

He puts the drink on the bedside table and backs away. Zim squints at it.

It’s already opened.

“Did you poison this?” Zim asks. 

“Did I… what?”

“You poisoned this, and you thought that I, an Irken invader, a special agent, would be so _stupid_ as to—”

“Woah, look, I don’t even know where to get poison around here, I just—”

Zim takes the can and flings it at the Dib. It misses by a significant margin and bounces of the wall, then rolls along the floor, leaking soda as it goes.

“Nice try, worm.”

Dib just watches him for a moment. Zim wishes he’d leave — the exertion of picking up and throwing a can was making him pant, and he couldn’t even really look at Dib without squinting. He knew what _he_ looked like, too — his skin was still burnt to a crisp on the bottoms of his feet, his knees, his elbows, his forearms, and his hands. His neck was just as bad where his suit met his helmet, and his normal clothes irritated his skin and, last he knew, were covered with blood, so he was stuck wearing that stupid, stretched-out novelty t-shirt.

“Okay,” Dib eventually says. “I won’t open it next time.” 

He leaves. 

Zim glares at the door until he passes out.

Zim lies, bored, staring at the ceiling. He still can’t sit up. He can still barely focus on anything long enough to see it (he can see, however, that the soda can and sandwich he’d tossed earlier are still on the floor). Tenn comes in and out and doesn’t say anything to him, just checks his vitals and leaves, ignoring him as he berates her the whole time.

He can’t help it. He’s in a foul mood.

Every time he tries to sit up, his head swims. He can’t stand, can’t walk, can’t do anything. It’s infuriating. 

If Tak were here, she would at least sit with him, at least talk to him and maybe help take his mind off the fact that he’s completely useless right now. Sure, she’d probably pepper in some asinine commentary on how he’d nearly died for something as silly as a rock, or how their Tallest were gluttons for seeing Zim sacrifice himself for them, or how all of this — the pain, the nausea, the immobility — meant nothing, was just entertainment, not even real— 

Zim swallows and shakes his head. Well. Tak would say that, and he would obviously know that it was just her wrong opinion, and that would be that. 

Tak was allowed to have wrong opinions. What she wasn’t allowed to do was ignore him when he was on bedrest and leave him to fend for himself.

Zim grits his teeth and sits up as quickly as he can, hoping that a fast enough movement will trick his PAK and save him the subsequent retching. It doesn’t work, and he heaves painfully, clutching his abdomen, tears springing forth and stinging the welts on his face until the pain gets so surreal that he blacks out and flops backward again.

He wakes up gasping, his body flooding with adrenaline and visions of the cancri blending with the plain walls of the med bay, the waves of heat coming off the ground on Salt. He tries to sit up and can’t, tries to clear his vision and can’t, and he can’t swing his arms and his PAK is responding even more sluggishly than usual.

“Tak,” he groans, but he doesn’t know where she is. 

He doesn’t know where he is and he takes deep gulps of air and tries to remember where he is, what’s happening, what’s attacking him, and he can’t.

This time, he wakes up to an unfamiliar sound. He squeezes his eyes shut, banishing the memories of dark corners and rough, selfish hands. He opens his eyes and sees the Dib, crouched over a mess on the floor.

“What are you doing?” he croaks.

Dib glances at Zim over his shoulder, then turns back to what he was doing. “Cleaning.”

“Cleaning what?”

“The soda and the sandwich. It’s making the whole room smell nasty.”

“Then get out,” Zim manages. 

He hears the Dib grunt something but he can’t understand what it is. He drifts off again, just as his gaze slides over to his bedside table, where an unopened can of soda sits.

He manages to get out of bed this time. The instant his PAK is unplugged from the generator, he falls to the floor.

Tenn comes rushing in a moment later, and his skin and muscles scream as she lifts him and dumps him back on the bed. She hooks him up and, to his surprise, crawls into bed behind him, so he's sitting up and his back is resting against her chest. She hooks her chin over his shoulder and sighs.

“If you just rested and let yourself get better, you’d heal sooner, do you know that?”

“Where’s Tak?”

“She—”

“Why won’t she see me?”

Tenn sighs again, then Zim feels the familiar sensation of Tenn’s gentle fingers stroking at his antenna. He closes his eyes and leans backward against her.

“She’s just out of sorts right now, okay?” asks Tenn. “She’ll come see you when she’s ready.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I can’t force her.”

Zim hums. He feels all of the nervous energy still buzzing within his tired, weak bones. It’s still there, always there, singing to him about things he wants to forget, challenging him to get up, to do _something_ , otherwise he might combust. He wants to listen to it, but he can’t.

His skin still burns. The pain on the bottoms of his feet is still creeping up his legs. His PAK is weak and still struggling to keep him alive, let alone keep him active. He floats, suspended, disconnected, trapped in his own PAK, his own brain. He’s resting against Tenn but touching nothing, alone.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but Tenn is shifting behind him and pulling away, then lying him back down on the bed.

“Stay here,” he rasps. 

She touches his cheek. “I have to go,” she says. “There’s work to be done. I’ll get comms back online so you can call our Tallest, okay? That’s something to look forward to.”

Their Tallest. Right.

“And then we can finally get rid of that human. It’ll be our biggest success, won’t it?” she whispers, the excitement evident in her voice. “Bringing them the vice admiral will change everything for us.”

“Okay,” says Zim, and Tenn recedes, disappearing, and he’s disconnected again, lost, alone.

His dreams are milder, which makes him think that, at some point, Tenn had snuck him some kind of sedative or sleep aid to make his rest more peaceful. The images are blurrier, but still there, just waiting every time Zim turns around. He’s sluggish, though, and tired of running from them.

Eventually he wakes up, his head clearer than it’s been in a while. He stares at the ceiling, not tired enough to need more sleep, but drained, not able to move much. 

It’s torture.

He wishes for Tak, begs for some kind of communication between their PAKs so she can hear him and come running. Tenn is trying, he can tell, but she isn’t Tak, she doesn’t— her comfort is impersonal, unsympathetic, and he knows she doesn’t understand. If Tenn had taken the mission, she would have done as she always does: lie in bed and close her eyes until she was completely healed, then spring to her feet as if nothing had happened.

Zim hasn’t been able to lie still like that in years, if ever. He can’t just close his eyes and think of nothing like Tenn can.

He hears a whoosh, and his head lolls to the side. He sees the Dib approaching.

“What do you want?” he asks, his voice clearer, stronger, but still uneven.

Dib sits on the edge of the bed and takes the can from the bedside table. He shows the top of it to Zim, how it’s unopened, then pops the tab. He places it in Zim’s hand. 

Zim’s distracted by the soothing cold of the can against his palm.

“How long has this been here?” he asks.

“What?” asks Dib, his brow knit.

“This… this was here a while ago. Why is this still cold?”

Dib shrugged. “I’ve been… switching them out, when you don’t drink them. Just, you know, putting the warmer ones back in the fridge. Just in case you woke up and wanted it, so it would be cold.”

Zim hoists himself up on one elbow and takes a tentative sip while he listens. He takes another, enjoying the refreshment, the way it hits his empty spooch but doesn’t make him want to gag.

“Hey, did you want to go back to sleep? I can leave.” 

Zim slams the drink back on the table just in time for his elbow to give out, and he flops backward onto the bed unceremoniously.

“Not tired,” he says, his eyes on the ceiling.

“Do you want to, um…” Zim glances at the Dib, still sitting on the edge of the bed. He produces a pack of playing cards from the pocket of his jacket. “Tenn actually let me grab these, since you’re, uh, not in the mood to talk to her and she and Tak are… fighting, I guess? I dunno. She said to just take them.”

Zim stares at the cards. His gaze flicks up to Dib for a moment, then returns to the deck. 

“Do you… wanna play?”

Zim blinks.

Truthfully, he hadn’t thought much about the Dib since his assignment to Salt. It had become less of an issue, mostly because Dib had all but disappeared after Tenn had given him a second black eye — which, Zim notices, is almost completely healed. 

He still didn’t know what to do with this stranger. He’d come to realize that he had no idea who Dib even was anymore, although he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know. He still wasn’t sure why Dib had made those advances in the first place, what the point of it was, if it really _was_ malicious, or a joke, or—

Or. 

Zim pushes the thoughts from his head. Maybe he doesn’t have Tak to talk to, and he’s too weak to spar. But, playing cards with Dib could be an interesting distraction from the dark thoughts lurking in the corners of his mind. He could test Dib’s patience, irritate him, get him annoyed. That could be fun.

“Fine,” says Zim, sitting up so that he’s half slumped against the wall. “But don’t expect to win. It’s a very complicated game.”

To his surprise, Dib picks up on the game fairly quickly. To his greater surprise, Dib wants to keep playing again, and again, and again, even as he loses almost every match, even as he struggles to even play, with his hands still bound together.

Zim can smell the infection on Dib’s wrists. It makes him gag a little.

He’s lost track of how long they’ve been here as he watches Dib’s gaze scan his hand again. His eyes narrow, and he exhales through his nose.

He places a card on top of the pile, and Zim instantly makes his move. “I win.”

Dib rolls his eyes. “Not fair. There’s too much luck in this game. Not enough strategy.”

“If you think there’s any luck in this game at all, you’re just not good at strategizing,” Zim snaps back.  


Dib shakes his head, then collects the cards and starts to organize them. He plucks the remainder of Zim’s cards out of his hand and adds them to the shuffle. 

“So,” says Dib quietly. “Are you feeling any better?”

Zim can’t say that he does, but at least he’s awake. “A little,” he says.

“Are you… what happened?” Dib asks. “When you were getting that thing?”

“It’s a rock,” says Zim, not looking over where the stone was still sitting on his bedside table. “And what happened is… confidential.”

Dib narrows his eyes and glances at Zim, then resumes shuffling. “What’s the rock for?”

“Also confidential.”

“Okay, fine,” says Dib. “How much longer until you’re back to normal, then?”

“That information is also—”

“Confidential? How? For what purpose would you need to keep that a secret from me?” 

Zim just glares.

“You know, this was supposed to be my room while I was here, and, instead, I’m stuck sitting in the stupid cockpit or sleeping in your bunk, which is just fucking metal, and it’s really uncomfortable.”

Zim crosses his arms over himself, the fabric of his novelty t-shirt unusually soft against his damaged skin. He looks away.

He hears Dib sigh. “Fine, whatever,” he says. “Let’s just play another round.”

As Dib’s skills improve, the games get longer, the strategies more drawn-out, the points awarded more sparingly. The mood improves, as well, and Zim feels less like Dib is mining for secret Irken intel and more like he’s just genuinely curious when he asks what Zim was doing on Earth after Dib got abducted.

“Eh,” says Zim, eying his cards. “Took over a few cities. Did some experiments. Not much.”

“So… Earth is… still there?” Dib asks, and Zim can feel eyes on him, studying him, trying to gauge whether he’s lying or not.

“Far as I know, yeah. My Tallest said the Earth takeover was being postponed. Personnel changes or something like that.” 

“Postponed?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. They reassigned me, so it’s not really my mission anymore.”

Dib almost looks relieved by that, although Zim doesn’t know why. Probably because no other invader would ever be as competent at taking over Earth as Zim. 

“What did you get reassigned to?” Dib asks, his brow creasing as Zim places a card down on the pile between them. “I don’t think you ever told me.”

Zim had told him it was confidential. He repeats it, thoughts of the Dome still hot on his heels.

Dib rolls his eyes. “Right. How could I forgot?”

Zim watches Dib take his turn and then mulls over his next move.

“What were you doing, then?” Zim asks. “While you were being raised by that iapetun.”

Dib shrugs. “Learning. Training. I was pretty messed up when they found me, so it took them a while to get me back in shape, but, after that, it was mostly… I don’t know, school and stuff. When I got older, I got drafted to join the Intervention Force, so I’ve been doing that.”

“The what?” Zim asks. “Intervention Force?”

Truthfully, Zim knew very little about the planet Dib apparently was calling home these days. He couldn’t even remember who their leader was. But, clearly it was important, if his Tallest were asking for information. It’s the whole reason Dib is here in the first place. 

Dib’s face flushes a little, and he just mutters, “Nothing. Let’s get back to the game.”

“Okay, fine,” says Zim, and they do.

Whatever Dib’s involved with, Zim realizes he doesn’t actually need to care that much. Irk has dominated the cosmos since Tallest Miyuki’s reign, and no rinky-dink planet in the who-knows-where galaxy is going to change that.

It had been nice, for a second there, to just play a game with the Dib-human, though. But, Zim remembers, they’re on opposite sides, again. Like always, Dib is his enemy. His ill-equipped, outnumbered enemy, but his enemy nonetheless.

Zim wins. They play again. He’s about to finish a turn when Dib asks, “How long has it been, anyway?”

“What?”

“Since I got abducted. I didn’t — I lost count a while ago. Do you know?” 

Zim’s card is in his hand, ready to destroy Dib, but he pauses. “Uh,” he says, thoughtful. “How long has it been?” He counts backwards, balking for a moment at just how many years he’d spent in the Dome.

He sorts it out in his head and then looks over at Dib, who’s staring at him, his expression intense.

Zim doesn't know why, but he pauses. 

Dib’s been off Earth since he was a smelly, snot-nosed little brat with a squeaky voice and round, childish features. And, now… now Dib was a man, certainly, tall as Professor Membrane with a sharp, square jaw covered in little hairs. Dib, with his eyebrows thicker and his nose longer and straighter and his scent more masculine, more heavy, certainly looks very little like the boy he'd been when Zim last saw him on Earth. He doesn’t act much like him, either. He’s more weathered and worn, scarred, Zim remembers. Not quite himself anymore, Zim thinks. 

“Fifteen Earth years,” Zim finally answers. 

Dib’s eyebrows raise for a moment, and Zim watches him curb his reaction. 

“That long?” 

“Yes.” 

“Wow,” says Dib, looking away for a moment. “So, I’m... almost thirty, already, and Gaz, she's gotta be twenty-six by now, and… my dad—” Dib cuts himself off, then abruptly stands and leaves the room. “I’m gonna… I gotta go.” 

Zim thinks he’s gone for good and almost regrets it, but then, just a few minutes later, Dib is back, ready to play cards and not talk about Earth anymore.

**ii.**

Dib steps into med bay and hands Zim his dipping candy and his soda, then checks Zim’s vitals like Zim had explained how to. He refills the nutrient bag connected to Zim’s IV, makes sure that the generator is still running smoothly, and then settles himself into the chair he’d brought in from the kitchen. He grabs the pack of playing cards off of Zim’s bedside table and begins awkwardly shuffling them, his wrists stinging. He watches Zim take big gulps of the soda while he shuffles.

“Feeling any better today?” he asks. 

Zim drops the empty soda can onto the table and reaches for the candy.

“No.”

Dib shakes his head. “You seem better.”

Zim narrows his eyes. “How do you know?”

Dib gestures with his chin toward Zim. “You’re sitting up, more than you could before. That’s progress. You just chugged an entire can of soda. Plus, you look better. I mean, your skin on your face looks like it’s finally starting to really heal.”

“Yes, well,” Zim grumbles. “Still can’t get up.”

“Just be patient,” says Dib, dealing the cards to himself and Zim. “You’ll get there.”

And he freezes.

What was going on?

Zim shrugs, says, “I guess so,” and waits for Dib to make the first move. 

Dib’s still frozen.

When had this happened? Last he checked, he was being tugged around on a leash by Zim’s friends. He was being treated like an animal, forced to each nasty protein bars and shower with his bleeding wrists in cuffs. Why was he suddenly doting on Zim?

A voice in the back of his head tells him that he knows why. Because Tenn and Tak were still in a weird place, fighting about something Dib still wasn’t privy to, and Zim was sick — _really_ sick — and Dib still felt a chasm in his gut, the same one that had formed the day that Tenn punched him in the face.

He still felt like a jerk for the way he’d treated Zim before, and, apparently, he’d been eagerly waiting on Zim hand and foot ever since they went to that weird salt planet to make up for it.

It had just been… odd. Unexpected. The more Dib had pushed Zim out of his comfort zone, the more he realized that Zim was going to just… comply. That day in the hallway, his mind had been screaming for Zim to stop him, but Zim just… hadn’t. On Earth, Zim used to smack him upside the head just for looking at him for too long. Now, Dib could apparently invade Zim’s personal space all he wanted, and he wouldn’t even get a soft “no” for it.

Thoughts of Zim aside, Dib had been sick to his stomach the rest of the day over it. Sure, that might have had to do with the punches he’d taken, but he knew that it mainly had to do with the fact that, if Tenn hadn’t interrupted them, he might have… or, maybe, he _would_ have—

If Tenn hadn’t stopped him, and Zim wasn’t going to, would Dib have done something? Something terrible, something he was regretting before he’d even done it? Would he have gone through with it, grabbed for power at Zim’s expense? 

Dib doesn’t know. He doesn’t really want to know. He had never in his life seen himself as the type of person to do that, but he figured he could test it out, just to see if it would work. Seeing Zim’s wide eyes, his shuddering breaths, though, had made Dib’s stomach drop. With his knee between Zim’s legs and his body holding Zim against the wall, with the realization that Zimwasn’t about to deploy a spider leg and shove it through his gut, Dib would have started begging to Sathana, to Iapetus, even, for some kind of divine intervention, if it meant that he didn’t have to go through with whatever he was about to do. Would he have? The idea plagues Dib as the days pass. He doesn’t think so, but he also doesn’t want to admit that the idea had seemed decent at the time only because he knew that it was something Aaro had done in the past.

When he’d told Dib about it, it had been without remorse, with a focus on the good that his power grab had done for the Intervention Force, for the colonized people that just needed to see that the irkens weren’t the only ones who could take charge. Dib had been trying to do the same, hadn’t he? If Aaro had done it, could it really have been _that_ bad?

He shakes the _yes_ out of his mind just as it enters it. It isn’t worth it, is it, to wonder where on the morality spectrum Aaro fell. He had raised Dib, and Dib was as much like Aaro as he could ever try to be. And, there was a war going on — a Reclamation, as Aaro had called it, and a great one. And, Aaro had told him that war blurred the lines between what was good and what was right.

Dib sighs. He doesn’t want to think about it any more. He shifts his attention to Zim.

They’d just completed a game, and Dib was about to grab Zim’s cards and start shuffling, but something in Zim’s face was giving Dib pause.

They’d been floating slowly through space for almost three weeks now, since the accident or whatever had happened that got Zim so hurt. Tak had told him that it would be a while before they got to the station, which was frustrating, but… well. Dib was having an okay time playing games with Zim, so it wasn’t all bad.

Zim’s condition is improving. He should be ready to leave med bay soon. His face has cleared of all of its scarring, and he’s able to sit up and gesticulate. His voice is stronger, less raspy, and the thin line of charred flesh around his neck has knit together and all but disappeared. He glances out the window and Dib notices, for the hundredth time, that Zim is still wearing the t-shirt Dib had borrowed weeks ago.

The sight of it was as revolting as the sight of Zim’s mangled, burnt body the day that he got that pink rock. It makes Dib feel like even more of an asshole, even as he sits by Zim with his uniform buttoned to the neck.

“Sorry I stretched your shirt out,” he eventually says, even though he’s only marginally sorry about it, compared with everything else that he did.

Zim plucks at the collar of the shirt, which hangs a little around his neck. “It’s fine,” he says. “I should be back in my uniform soon, anyway. The shirt was just a… keepsake.”

“Keepsake from what?”

Zim gestures to the picture on the shirt of a  giant space donut, an Irken attraction that Dib had heard of once or twice.

Dib nods. “When did you go see that?”

“While ago.”

“With Tenn and Tak?”

“Yeah. After our first mission together.”

“That’s nice,” says Dib, and Zim just shrugs.

“It was, before you stretched it out.”

Dib purses his lips. He isn’t really sure what to do next, and he can’t really understand why Zim’s mood had suddenly dropped. He peeks over at the generator and sees that it’s still running, its gentle humming so faded into the background that Dib sometimes forgets it’s there. He glances back at Zim, whose energy still seems like it’s been suddenly sapped out of him.

He wonders if Zim’s just bored, or sad. He can relate to the feeling on being stuck on bedrest for what feels like forever. Tentatively, he places the cards on the bed, then reaches forward and touches a finger to Zim’s antenna. 

Zim flinches at the touch. His gaze slides over Dib as he rubs gently down to the end of the antenna, noticing that it isn’t nearly lax enough for him to wrap it around his finger like he’d seen the irkens do with each other. He glances between Zim’s face and the antenna, then swallows when Zim eventually takes him by the wrist and places his hand on the bed. Dib’s heart beats a little faster, and he reaches forward one more time to squeeze Zim’s hand, then draw back.

Zim just stares at him.

“I’m glad you ended up okay,” Dib hears himself saying.

Zim blinks, then turns away with a shrug. “I’ve had worse. Let’s just play.”

Dib nods and takes the cards up, shuffling and dealing and wondering what, exactly, happened to Zim that could be worse than this.

They play a couple of games, one of which Dib actually wins. It takes a while for Dib to build up the courage but, eventually, after some time of rehearsing what he’s going to say in his head, he clears his throat.

“So, look,” he says, not looking at Zim. “I, uh, also just wanted to say sorry about, you know, before.” 

He can feel Zim’s gaze shift from his hand to Dib’s face. Dib takes a fortifying breath and meet’s Zim’s eyes.

“When I was… uh, acting… inappropriately before. You were, you know, clearly not interested, and I shouldn’t have pushed it. I’m really sorry.”

Zim gives him a quizzical look. Eventually, he just shrugs.

“Whatever,” he says. “I don’t blame you, I suppose. It must be dreadful, to want me so badly.”

The casual dismissal of his apology is confusing, but Dib feels a certain lightness in his body that he hasn’t felt in years, and he doesn’t both correcting Zim, even as Zim slaps down the winning card and ends the game. He just smiles.

The lightness fades when he begins to dwell on how easily Zim could dismiss Dib's apology. Like it wasn't a big deal, like what Dib had done was well within the realm of what Zim would expect from him. 

He’s reshuffling the cards when he notices Zim look away and cross his arms.

“Play again?” he asks, and Zim shakes his head.

“Not in the mood,” he responds.

“Why not?”

Zim locks eyes with him. “Because we’ve been playing this game, nonstop, for days, in case you haven’t noticed. It gets old.”

“Okay,” says Dib. He’d never noticed Zim get bored of this game when he played with Tenn and Tak. “What do you want to do, then?”

Zim doesn’t say anything, just stares out the window and frowns.

Dib feels at a loss. His guilt still nagging at him, despite, perhaps because of, Zim’s flippant acceptance of his apology, he feels an urgent need to pull Zim out of this suddenly pissy mood.

“Tenn says that if your vitals keep improving like this, you should be done with bedrest in a few days,” Dib says.

Zim shakes his head. “I should be out of here now,” he says. “It’s a waste for me to just be sitting here.”

“I guess,” says Dib. “But, you know, I think Tak is still working on comms. And the ship isn’t really ready for any real speed, you know? So, you’d probably just be hanging around, anyway. Maybe helping repair the ship but, you know, they haven’t asked me for help, so maybe they have it covered.”

“Or, _maybe_ , they don’t trust you to help with repairs since you tried to kill me.”

“I didn’t— that wasn’t… fine,” says Dib. “But if it were really bad, they would have by now just to keep us all alive.”

“Whatever,” says Zim. He holds himself tighter.

“Okay, so, what do you normally do when you guys are flying somewhere and you’re bored of playing cards?” Dib tries. “Do you do anything else?”

“I dunno,” says Zim.

“Come on,” Dib presses. “There must be something else you do on this ship all day.”

Zim slants him a look, and then Dib hears his PAK whirring. Zim winces, then reaches over his own shoulder and produces a tiny square, which grows in his hands until it becomes a flat, square tablet. Dib inches closer to get a better look.

“We could watch something, I suppose,” says Zim. 

“That could be good.”

They argue for a few minutes over what to watch, Zim fighting to watch some Irken film about Tallest Miyuki’s bloody takeover of the rest of Irk’s native fauna, Dib arguing for literally anything else. Eventually, they settle on a cancelled Vortian documentary series about the science of making comfortable furniture, which is infinitely more boring but probably less upsetting than the Miyuki thing would have been. 

Once they decide, Zim scoots over a little in the small bed. Dib takes this as an invitation and shifts from his chair to the mattress, watching Zim watch him as he does. When he settles in, the line of his body stretched along Zim's, Zim holds the tablet over their laps.

“Hold the other side,” he instructs.

“I… really can’t,” says Dib, holding up his cuffed hands.

“Oh. Right.”

Zim holds the tablet for the both of them and they watch one episode, then another, then another. Dib looks over at one point and realizes that Zim isn’t watching the film anymore. He’s staring at Dib’s hands, still bound together and looking, frankly, disgusting.

“Go to the medicine drawer,” Zim eventually says. 

“What?”

Zim gestures with his chin to a drawer on the wall a few feet away. Dib gets up and pulls it open. 

“Grab the stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“The… the jar. With the powdery stuff.”

Dib does, not really sure what Zim’s getting at, but he returns to the bed and sits down just as Zim lays the tablet on his lap.

Zim reaches for his hands and pulls them toward himself, his antennae twitching as Dib lets out a hiss of pain. He says nothing, though, as he takes the short jar of powder out of Dib’s hands. As he does, Dib looks at the palms of Zim’s hands — no longer cracked and bleeding, but clean, with fresh skin. He watches as Zim reaches behind his shoulder again and retrieves a small, button-looking thing from his PAK, then presses it into an indent on the right cuff. 

The cuffs fall off. 

Dib turns to Zim, about to say something, but something about the look on Zim’s face tells him to just shut up and sit still. Zim dips his hand into the jar and removes a small brush, which he uses to spread the powder over the injuries on Dib’s wrists. Dib hisses again at the sting of the bristles against his damaged, infected skin. But then, as Zim holds his hands and methodically applies the powder, as it thickens into a paste and melts into his skin, he feels the sting fade for the first time. As the paste seeps into his skin, he notices that his wrists are healing. The sting fades, the infection clears, until nothing is left but some old, dried blood.

“Huh,” says Dib. “Thanks.”

“Just put them back on when you leave,” says Zim.

“Why?”

Zim just shakes his head, then holds his tablet aloft so that Dib can support the other side.

They watch together for a while. Dib doesn’t realize he’s tired, but with the ache in his wrists gone and an actual mattress beneath him, he falls asleep.

When he wakes up, Zim is still next to him, his head resting on Dib’s shoulder and his eyes closed, looking more peaceful than Dib had ever seen him. The tablet is flat on their laps, still playing the show. Dib closes his eyes.

**iii.**

It’s Zim’s last day of bedrest when Tak finally comes to visit.

He’s sitting up in bed, looking at something on his tablet when she walks in. He looks at her, his antennae bobbing forward with surprise, almost like he can’t believe she’s actually there. She puts a tray of snacks on his bedside table and stands by his side, awkward.

“Hi,” she says.

“Tak,” says Zim quietly.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Zim, still looking at her like he isn’t quite sure what to do about her presence.

“Tenn says your vitals have really improved the past week.”

“I suppose so.” 

“The ship is in much better shape. I’ll have comms running by tomorrow so you can contact the Tallest.”

Zim nods. “Okay.”

Tak takes a deep breath.

“I asked Tenn if she would tell you to come visit me.”

Tak purses her lips. “I know.”

“She said you didn’t want to.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” Tak says softly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “It’s just…”

She sighs. She can’t explain all of her feelings to Zim. Not now. She and Tenn had settled into an uncomfortable, post-argument routine, and things were starting to go back to normal, even if they hadn’t actually spoken about their fight. They probably never would. Zim wouldn’t let her get away with that, though.

“I’m sorry for what I said before your mission, Zim,” says Tak. “I didn’t want to steal your job from your or curry favor with the Tallest, I promise, I was just… I was afraid of... this.” She gestures to Zim’s form, still looking a little sickly, even after all of these days healing. 

“This is what we do, Tak,” says Zim. “Our job is dangerous.” 

“Does it have to be?”

Zim looks away. “I’m fine,” he says. “We don’t need to fight about this any more.” 

Tak watches Zim take a snack from the tray she’d brought in and start opening it up. They’d be lost without him, she realizes. She and Tenn wouldn’t be able to function if Zim weren’t around, even if he were just temporarily out of commission while they went to a medical station to get him reactivated. Still. These past few weeks without him had been brutal for Tak, and she could tell that Zim’s absence had had an effect on Tenn, too. Without Zim around, it was too easy for Tenn to forget that they all cared for each other, that they weren't colleagues, working alongside each other but at arm’s length. For Tak, having Zim cooped up in med bay this whole time had been painfully lonely, like she was the only one on the ship, drifting from room to room, repairing one thing while something else fell apart, dragging her feet and feeling disconnected, suspended in space, untethered. 

They need him, she realizes. Without Zim, this entire operation — their entire team — would fall apart. It pains her to think about it, how her feelings for Tenn aren’t enough to keep the two of them cooperating. But, it’s true. If they lost Zim, really lost him, forever, she and Tenn would drift away from each other. 

“Tenn and I will be happy to have you back with us,” she says softly. “It’s been so boring without you around to regale us with your stories of conquering Earth. Plus, she’s not nearly as fun to wrestle with.”

Zim snorts at that, then looks away.

“Zim, if anything were to happen to you—”

“Nothing happened to me,” Zim insists. “I’m fine. I’m just… all I want is to do what the Empire needs of me, and to serve my Tallest.”

Tak sighs and nods. She wants to ask, “That’s all you want?” But she refrains, not because she let go of what Tenn calls conspiracies, but because she can’t bring herself to put any more stress on Zim’s shoulders. 

“I’m going to go finish setting up comms. Tenn will come back in when you’re ready to get out of bed.”

“Okay,” says Zim.

As Tak goes to leave, though, he grabs her by the sleeve. He looks up at her, vulnerability etched all over his features.

“Where is the Dib?” he asks.

“Sleeping,” says Tak. “He’s in your bunk.”

“Oh,” says Zim, looking away. “Right.”

Tak watches him for a second, then turns to leave. His grip tightens on her sleeve.

“Tak,” he says, “I’m having a hard time deciding if that human likes me or not.”

“Zim,” says Tak, her voice gentle as she reaches up to wind one of his antennae around her finger, “you really need to pull yourself together.”


	8. A New Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have emotional motion sickness, somebody roll the windows down,” - Phoebe Bridgers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been 100 years since i've updated but life has been kind of a mess and being on the internet does not tend to help so i took a little break lmao. but i was still writing! so here's 3 new chapters. will likely be uploading multiple chapters at a time from here on our just because it's easier to write/edit in bulk than do one at a time when i have less time to dedicate to a project
> 
> anyway enjoy!

** i. **

Tenn’s hand hovers over the call button. She feels Tak’s and Zim’s eyes on her. She presses it.

Their Tallest appear.

“Greetings, my Tallest,” the three say in unison, although Tenn can feel the hesitation in both Zim and Tak’s voices, and she knows they’re as confused as she is.

Their Tallest have removed the couch from the bridge and are upright, their faces hard and serious. There isn’t a table-headed service drone or a leaf-waver in sight, and the bridge is unusually packed with navigators and guards. 

“Finally!” Tallest Purple snaps. “We have been waiting for weeks!”

“My Tallest!” Zim shouts, “I have retrieved your very special stone!” 

He holds it aloft so their Tallest can see, and they scowl. 

“That’s great, Zim,” says Tallest Red. 

“Shall I bring it to you, my Tallest?” Zim asks. “Shall we come to the Armada and—?”

“Why don’t you throw it out the airlock, instead?” asks Tallest Purple.

“Yeah,” says Tallest Red. “Do that.”

“Of course, my Tallest!” shouts Zim, and he sprints from the room, his gait uneven, his feet tripping over the steps from the lower deck to the upper deck of the cockpit.

Tenn purses her lips and chances a look at Tak. She’s staring ahead at the screen, her expression neutral, her antennae stiff.

“My Tallest,” says Tenn eventually. “We are prepared to complete our previous mission of capturing the vice admiral, with your permission.”

“Obviously, do that!” Tallest Purple snaps. “We assigned you that vice admiral months ago, and all you’ve done is screw around!”

Tenn blinks and takes a step back. “We were not… there was no _screwing_ _around_ , my Tallest, we had to complete major repairs on the ship after we left Salt, and— and…” 

Anxiety overwhelms her, and her hands begin to shake.

“Please, my Tallest, we would never be so thoughtless with your time,” says Tak flatly, her voice almost robotic. “We performed the task you assigned us and prepared for the next one. That is all.”

“Whatever,” barks Tallest Red. “We need that vice admiral, now.”

Behind her, Tenn can hear the sound of the airlock opening and closing. 

“Our informant has advised us that the mark will be on a planet outside of Irken-known space. Expect an updated map with the coordinates.”

Tenn frowns, despite herself.

“Informant?” asks Tak, echoing Tenn’s thoughts. “Who?”

“It’s not your concern, Agent Tak,” says Tallest Red. “Anyway, you are expected—”

“Done, my Tallest!” Zim shouts, bursting into the cockpit. “The stone has been thrown from the airlock and is now floating through deep space, just as you asked!” 

Zim stumbles on weak legs back to the dashboard and nearly knocks Tak over. She catches him and helps him stand upright. Tallest Red’s eyes narrow.

“As I was _saying_ ,” he hisses, “you are expected to make the exchange on Planet Tethys in two weeks’ time. Before you do, though, you’ll pick up another operative who will be joining you on this mission. We’re sending you the coordinates to the outpost where he's waiting. Get this done as soon as you possibly can.”

Tallest Red’s words are met with silence. 

Another operative? Tenn’s brow furrows. Since when did they need another?

Was she not enough?

“It is crucial that you succeed and deliver the vice admiral to us promptly,” says Tallest Purple. “Do you understand?”

“Of course, my Tallest,” says Tenn. “We will not let you down.”

“You had better not,” growls Tallest Red, and the screen goes black.

Beside her, Tak and Zim each let out a breath. Tenn realizes that she’d been holding one, herself. 

The cockpit is silent as they each process the information.

“Did they say another irken?” Zim eventually asks. “Why? What’s the point?”

Tenn shakes her head. “We… we’ve never needed another—” 

“What are we, trainees? This is insulting! We don’t need some random irken coming in and… what, bossing us around?” 

Tenn blinks and looks at Zim. “We completed the Salt mission,” she adds. “Why do they think we can’t do this one? We were originally going to do it, just the three of us.”

Zim throws his hands into the air and begins to stalk off. “The last thing we need is some blowhard coming in and stealing _our_ mission! This is _our_ mission! Unbelievable.”

“If it’s what our Tallest wish—” Tenn begins.

“It’s for the best, yeah, sure.” Zim slams a hand on the wall and the door whooshes open. “I’m not giving up my bunk!”

He’s still ranting to himself as he storms out, probably to go find the Dib-human and complain some more. Tenn had given up on trying to keep the two of them apart since Zim’s bedrest. At this point, it was easier to just accept that the Dib would keep himself glued to Zim’s side, at least until Zim was fully healed, and Tenn was fairly certain that the Dib knew that he’d be getting as many black eyes as needed to keep him in line. 

She had all of that under control. 

Besides, she didn’t have time to dwell over the unexpected, tenuous friendship that the two had built behind her back. It wasn’t worth it — the human was part of the trade and, after this, they’d never see him again. She’d had bigger things to worry about after the Salt mission nearly destroyed the hull of their ship, and Tak wasn’t even looking at her, and she could only hope that Zim had taken her words to heart.

Tenn remembers belatedly that she’s not the only one left in the cockpit. She turns to glance once more at Tak, who’s staring at the screen.

She and Tak had all but gone back to normal at this point. Well, that wasn’t really true. She and Tak were able to have short conversations about work-related things and Zim.

“That felt… different,” Tak whispers, her eyes narrowed.

“What?” asks Tenn.

“That… they were… they were serious.”

“What?” Tenn repeats.

Tak takes a hard look at Tenn. “They were really serious. They were… did you see the look on their faces?”

“They seemed… more alert,” Tenn allows. 

Tak turns to face Tenn fully, leaning her hip against the dashboard and crossing her arms. “Why are they assigning another irken to this mission? Why is it suddenly so important?”

“It’s always been important.”

“Why did they say we were wasting time on Salt?” Tak looks away, her eyes narrowed. “They _knew_ it was a waste of time,” she adds, almost to herself, her voice lowered.

“What? No, it wasn’t.” 

Tak meets Tenn’s gaze again, then shakes her head. “Forget it.”

Tak sighs and turns to look out the dashboard, her expression pensive. 

“The Salt mission wasn’t a waste of time.”

“You really don’t think so?” asks Tak, still looking outside. “Where’s that super-important rock we needed to get, huh?” 

“Our Tallest work in—”

“In mysterious ways, sure.”

“Can we not fight about this again?” asks Tenn.

Tak’s gaze lands on her, and it’s so intense, Tenn shrinks a little.

“Can you just… just think, for one second, what it could mean that they… _they_ didn’t assign us the vice admiral,” says Tak. “They didn’t even tell you to kidnap the human, did they?”

“They… no,” Tenn admits, and even that feels like blasphemy.

“They didn’t even care about this mission… something must have happened…” Tak looks away again. “Tenn, I think these iapetuns have done something. They must be a bigger threat than the Tallest originally thought.” She looks back at Tenn. “Do you remember that human saying anything about plans to attack Irk?”

“Attack Irk?” Tenn asks. “I don’t… I don’t think so. Do you think—?”

“Iapetus is a threat,” Tak says. “It must be. If the Tallest are sending _us_ in…” She looks away again, muttering, “but, we don’t get important missions — well, they’re sending someone else too, but… okay, so, that means it must be urgent—”

“Tak, this is probably just gathering information,” says Tenn quickly. “Of course, no planet could ever be a _real_ threat to Irk. And, besides, we do important missions all the time. This is nothing we can’t handle.”

She’s disarmed by Tak’s sudden confusion, her thoughtfulness. Was Tak worried?

Tak shakes her head and turns toward the exit. Tenn grabs her arm.

“Wait,” she says, softly. 

“What?” asks Tak.

“Do you… you don’t think they’re making us take another operative because I… because we did something wrong, do you? Do you think it’s just… it’s just for some other reason, right?”

“Sure, Tenn,” says Tak, her voice harder than Tenn would have liked. “I’m sure there’s some other reason. Like, that Iapetus is a real threat, and not some silly errand the Tallest sent us on for their own amusement.”

“Tak—”

“I think that maybe, instead of sending us on a meaningless suicide mission, the Tallest actually need something important, and they don’t trust us to do it on our own, because we fail every mission we get, so they’re sending in someone else to make sure the job gets done.”

Tenn’s face heats up. Tak turns to leave again, so Tenn digs her nails in harder.

Tak grunts, then faces Tenn. “ _What_?” 

“Some other reason,” Tenn asks, breathless, her grip all but slicing into Tak’s arm, making it shake. “Something else, surely, something that makes sense—”

Tak rips her arm from Tenn’s grip. “That’s the only thing that makes sense to me,” she says. 

She stalks away, leaving Tenn in the cockpit, alone.

Tenn takes a steadying breath. It doesn’t work, so she takes another, then another. She stands in the cockpit for a few minutes, taking deep breaths until she can open her eyes. She turns back toward the windshield and stares into the space.

Eventually, a _ding_ alerts her. The new coordinates. She downloads them to the ship’s mapping system. When the download is complete, she types a command into the control panel. 

The planet, Tethys, appears. It seems… unimpressive. Small, with no moons. Mostly swamps and marshes. She furrows her brow.

Why some other operative for this little planet? 

This mission was assigned especially to her. Why were her Tallest sending someone else in to take it?

There must be a reason, she tells herself. She can’t think of one, but there must be. There must be, there must be, there must be. She repeats it like a mantra to herself as she sits back in the pilot’s seat and steers her ship toward the outpost.

**ii.**

Zim storms into med bay as best as he can on his weak legs, still fuming.

The Dib is sitting, cross-legged on the bed, shuffling the cards around as best as he can in cuffs. Zim sits across from him with a huff and pulls his knees to his chin.

“Something wrong?” Dib asks, looking up from his cards.

“Something is _very_ wrong, Dib-creature,” Zim snaps, leaning forward and unlocking Dib’s cuffs with a swift movement, then grabbing for the cards. He starts to shuffle. “ _We_ are being sent to some silly new planet and, worst of all, we’re being forced to take another agent with us!”

Dib cocks a brow and pushes his cuffs to the side, so they’re out of the way but still in reach, in case Zim hears Tenn or Tak coming.

“A new planet? What do you mean?”

“Our Tallest have rejected the plan we initially gave to them and have instructed us to pick up some other _loser_ and then go all the way out of range to some stupid planet I’ve never even heard of!”

“What’s it called?”

Zim pauses for a second and ponders. “Oh, I don’t know… Teffist. Uh. Tethet. Something like—”

“Tethys.” 

The expression on Dib’s face is curious. 

“Yes,” says Zim. “That one. You’re familiar.”

“I… no. Not really. I know of it. I mean, I’ve heard of it.”

“What do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you know?!”

“Nothing!”

“You know something!”

“I just!” Dib’s face is red, and he dodges Zim’s gaze. “It’s a swamp planet. Real mucky and gross. I don’t know. Why are we going there, again?”

“My Tallest have an informant who told us the mark would be there.” Zim watches Dib’s confused face, his eyes darting around the room. “Which makes me wonder, actually. How come _you_ didn’t send us there in the first place?”

“I… I didn’t think…”

“You didn’t think what?”

“Who’s this informant, anyway?” Dib asks after a pause. “Can’t be someone who knows anything. _I_ know where Lobo’s offices are. And they aren’t on Tethys.” He shakes his head again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Zim.

“Maybe it means this informant, whoever they are, isn’t trustworthy.”

“If they are worthy of my Tallest’s trust, they are worthy of my trust,” says Zim, his antennae flattening to his skull.

“Well, they might be wrong.”

Zim goes back to shuffling the cards. “Nonsense,” he says. “Once we get to Teethies, you’ll see.”

“It’s Tethys.”

“Whatever.”

Zim watches Dib as he deals out the cards. He thinks about Dib — his confusion, his guardedness. They’re on the same side, for now, right? 

Maybe not. Maybe this… whatever they’ve developed, this amicability, was short-sighted. 

But, maybe Zim can’t really help it. He doesn’t really want to ignore the little flame he feels in his spooch when he spends time with Dib, and Dib is — well, he’s confusing, and he made a complete ass of himself not long ago, but… that was in the past. He didn’t even seem like that person anymore. Instead he was… Zim can’t explain it. A part of him likes that. He likes that Dib is confusing, and weird, and maybe a little bit of a mystery. A part of him hates it, because the only thing he can imagine wanting more than the mystery is feeling that same exciting flame in the pit of his gut for someone that he knew, someone that knew him, like how he felt about Tenn and Tak but… not like that, at all, if that made sense.

Zim takes a breath.

Iapetus is the enemy, Zim reminds himself, and soon the enemy will be defeated.

After one more game of cards.

**iii.**

Tak wakes up with a start, her spooch pounding in her chest.She takes a few fast breaths, staring at the ceiling of her bunk as the clouds part and reality sets in. 

Three quick knocks against the door. She lets it open and Zim, on his hands and knees, eyes bright in the dark room, crawls inside and shuts the door behind him.

“Hi,” he says. 

He flops on top of her.

“Oof. Hi.”

“The snarl beast?”

“Yeah.”

Zim rolls to the side and Tak mirrors him, so they’re facing each other. 

“It’s okay, Tak,” says Zim, like it’s so simple. “There was nothing you could have done.”

There was, though, Tak wants to say. Something she could have done. 

The snarl beast had been in poor shape when Tak was assigned to fight it. Some poor drone had been ordered to remove some of its teeth to create a fashionable headdress for Tallest Purple, and one of its eyes was clearly infected. Its blue fur was raggedy and it walked on unsteady feet, its bones protruding and its head hanging low.

Tak had stood on the platform when it emerged, slowly, dragging itself into the Dome.

She’d dropped the electrified spear she’d been holding and removed her helmet. Her eyes met the Tallest in the stands.

“This beast is beneath me,” she’d shouted. “Allow me the honor of battling something with some fight in it for you, my Tallest.”

“Fight the snarlie, Tak!” Tallest Purple had shouted back. “Make it scream!”

Tak’s eyes had drifted back to the snarl beast then, cowering in the far corner of the Dome. Hiding from her. _Her._ An average-height wannabe invader a fraction of its size. 

“Come on, Tak!” Tallest Red had cheered. “Show us what you got!”

She’d been in the Dome for a year or two. She woke up, fought, and went to bed. The Tallest had liked her — she was still so enraged from her exile on Dirt, and still couldn’t take it out on the one irken at fault.

The irken who is now sitting in her bunk with her, rubbing her shoulder, comforting her.

In the Dome, she was an entertaining fighter: ruthless, fast, and strong. Willing to take on any creature the Tallest put in front of her. But… 

She’d stood on the platform, unmoving, until the Tallest sent a group of guards in to push her onto her hands and knees and rewire her PAK — in the open, humiliating, violating her in front of everyone — until they’d disabled the connection between her PAK and her brain. All it took then was a whispered order in her antennae and she was springing up and charging the poor beast, slashing it and tearing it apart until it was just barely alive, reduced to its tinier form and dragged back to med bay for just enough treatment to get it on its feet again — a fate worse than death.

Tak's brain had reconnected to her PAK as they were taking it away, right in front of her. She found that she was covered with its blood. Its sweat prickled at her skin. 

She stares into Zim’s eyes. 

She’d told him about it when they started living on this ship together, when the memory of it had startled her awake and the shock of it all had sent it spilling from her mouth in one rapid, tearful breath. He’d listened, and held her hand, and, somehow, knew not to lecture her on doubting the ways of the Tallest.

“Do you think it’s still there, in the Dome?” she asks.

“I’m sure it is,” says Zim, as if it’s a reassurance.

“What a terrible life,” Tak whispers. “I hope it’s dead.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I do. It would be better than that, barely alive, nothing to do but fight, heal just enough to walk, then have to go back out and fight again. An endless cycle of pain, no way out, no hope of escaping.”

“It’s not better than death.”

“I would rather be dead.”

Zim watches her with that expression, the one that makes her think he’s smarter than he lets on. He says nothing for a little while, then gently strokes her cheek. His gaze is still steady ashe watches her.

“It’ll be over one day,” he says quietly.

She’s taken aback. She didn’t think he’d say anything like that, step right to the line of what they’re talking about and dare her to dive in with him.

Salt must have hurt him worse than she’d thought.

He’s called her bluff. Tak rolls onto her back, away from Zim’s gaze, too scared to continue where she’s led them.

“I think you’re just angry that you’re getting a new bunkmate,” she says.

Zim, really, smarter than he lets on, skips easily over the raging river and lands on a safe, stable rock in the center of the water.

“It’s insulting,” he says. “Some jerk is going to come in and steal our mission! You should really be angrier about this.”

“I am,” she says.

Zim scoffs.

“I am, really,” she insists. “I’m sure, whoever it is, they’ll eat all of our snacks—”

“And drink our soda—”

“And the soda, yes—”

“And then, when we succeed, like we always do, the Tallest will praise _them_ , not _us_ , even though it was _our_ mission in the first place.”

Tak blinks. Her head whips around and she meets Zim’s gaze and wonders if he’d said it on purpose. Was this a code? Some kind of signal? 

She feels close to him, in this confined space, yes, but not because of the physical proximity. Her spooch begins to thud. She turns on her side to face him.

“And why another operative?” she asks. “Why do we need someone else?”

Zim shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Your little pet, he doesn’t know either?”

Zim’s face crinkles in disgust. “The Dib-creature is not my pet.”

“You spend a lot of time with him now.”

“He is moderately competent at playing cards.”

“And how is he at making conversation?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Tak props herself up on her elbow. “Did he say anything about Tethys? What was his reaction when you told him we weren’t going to his planet?”

“He…” Zim pauses. “He was confused. He didn’t… say much else.”

“How did he seem?”

Zim doesn’t meet her gaze, but she can tell he’s thinking. “Like he didn’t know what was going on.”

“Useless,” Tak says, flopping on her back.

“That’s all I know! If you’d wanted me to interrogate him, I would have, but you didn’t ask me to!”

“Whatever,” says Tak. “If the Tallest want to send us to our death on some random planet full of aliens, so be it.”

There’s a long pause. 

“Our Tallest wouldn’t do that.”

Tak closes her eyes. It was probably just a slip of the tongue, before. She shouldn’t get her hopes up.

“I’m going back to sleep. Leave me alone now.” 

Zim grumbles a bit but and turns around. 

The memory is still fresh, though, still painful, so she adds, “Or, at least, stop talking.”

He doesn’t move for a second, and then Tak feels him turn back to her and then flop back on top of her.

“Goodnight,” he says.

“Oof. Goodnight.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. 

She stays awake, even as Zim’s breathing begins to slow down, even as he makes little snorting sounds in his sleep.

She thinks about Tenn.

Did Tenn have dreams like Tak and Zim did? Tak never knew her to wake up in a cold sweat the way they do sometimes. Did she even have any memories like they did, ones that haunted her, hid in the corners of her mind, even when she was awake?

Probably not. Tenn had never seen anything wrong with fighting monsters in the Dome. If Tak remembered correctly, Tenn barely even fought monsters. She mostly got paired with other irkens, which, Tak would admit, were usually easier to fight. At least the irkens were willing to fight for the entertainment of the Tallest and the other Elites. The monsters, though — even the cancri, as foul a beast as it was — they didn’t understand. They didn’t know why they lived in a dungeon below ground, why the only light they saw came with a cost that they couldn’t comprehend, one that they didn’t sign up for. Not like any of the irkens ever signed up for being sent to the Dome but, well, at least they had a better outlook about it.

Zim snores loudly against her antennae, and it actually makes Tak laugh.

**iv.**

The cockpit is too small for all of this complaining.

“Maybe it’s just an enforcer,” says Tenn.

“We don’t _need_ an enforcer!” Zim snaps back. “We enforce just fine.”

“It’s probably someone just out of academy, tagging along because they need training,” says Tak.

“As if we agreed to take on an _intern_ ,” whines Tenn. “This is going to be so annoying.”

“ _So_ annoying,” Zim agrees.

“Well, we’re almost there,” says Tak. “So, I guess we’ll see.”

They’ve been going on about this for the past few days after the Tallest had apparently sent them off to pick up another irken. The idea of it made Dib uncomfortable — his track record with irkens wasn’t exactly spotless, and these days Tak seemed a lot more interested in what he had to say. Specifically, she had been grilling him at every turn about why they were getting a new member of the team and what Iapetus had done to warrant the extra precaution.

Dib couldn’t really say, for a couple of reasons. First, there was the fact that no one — well, not no one anymore, maybe — knew about the Intervention Force. Iapetus had been careful to only make contact with planets that had already been abandoned by Irken forces. That, or, they chose planets with a small enough population of colonizers that they could intervene without making themselves known, just by secretly supplies food, weapons, whatever was needed. Irk’s colonies had uprisings, the irkens present were gunned down, and Iapetus was safe from any scrutiny.

At least, that’s what Dib had thought.

It was a crucial point in the Intervention Force’s strategy to make sure that the actual intervention was a secret — it was always meant to look like discrete uprisings. And, they were always careful to only intervene in planets that the Tallest had basically abandoned anyway. That way, there wasn’t enough on the line for the Tallest to order re-invasion of the freed colony. As far as Dib knew, the Tallest barely cared about half their colonies these days. Most of them were devoid of resources and had only a few hundred Irken enforcers left, watching over a fraction of the native population. The plan was always the low-risk planets, at least until Iapetus had enough resources and soldiers to start taking down the bigger colonies. But, it wasn’t like they were going after Vort or something all of a sudden, right? Aaro would have told him. Right?

Dib knows he’s been stuck on this ship for a while. But, really, it hasn’t been that long, and if an invasion of a bigger colony were in the cards, Dib would know about it. Aaro tells Dib everything.

“What do you think, Dib-monster?” Tak asks, her eyes on him. “Why do _you_ think we’ll need an extra body to make this trade happen? And why, pray tell, are we going all the way into the depths of unknown space to do it?”

Dib glares at Tak. He can feel Tenn’s and Zim’s eyes on him — Tenn is sitting in the pilot’s seat and Tak and Zim are on the upper deck, Zim sitting next to him and Tak behind Zim, leaning on the back of his chair. 

He doesn’t miss the fact that his failed seduction of Zim apparently actually did have a lasting effect on the irkens’ dynamic. He hadn’t been privileged enough to see any real disagreements, but he could tell that there was tension among them. Especially Tenn and Tak.

“Isn’t Tenn the one in charge around here?” Dib asks Tak. “Why don’t you talk to her about it?”

Tak’s eyes narrow. “I’m asking _you_ about it, worm.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to say. Isn’t this something your dear Tallest would have told you about?”

Tak straightens and approaches Dib. She leans over, too close.

“I’d like you to say whatever it is you haven’t said to us that we need to know, worm. I’d like you to explain why the plan suddenly changed, and why we suddenly need more back-up.”

That’s the other thing. Dib truly doesn’t know why they’re going to Tethys, a random planet that he’d heard of once or twice. Iapetus used it for military research, since there weren’t many native fauna and it was just a nasty swamp planet. No one really lived there for longer than their assignments, and there wasn’t anything worth noting about the planet at all.

Why the Tallest thought Lobo would be there, Dib has no idea. Why the Tallest thought that they needed another agent to get the job done, he also has no idea. It is all very confusing, and Dib truly doesn't have an answer. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he repeats. “I’ve been with you guys this whole time.”

Tak clearly isn’t satisfied with the answer, and she cocks her fist.

“What do you want from me, here?” Dib asks, his gaze darting from Tak’s fist to her face. “I don’t know! I truly don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then get rid of me! Call off the deal, if I’m that untrustworthy! Toss me out the airlock like you keep saying you want to! Or just deal with the fact that there are things I can’t tell you and leave me alone!”

Dib stands because, really, he’s had enough. He’s sick of being in these handcuffs, even if Zim lets him take them off when they’re alone together. He’s sick of being dragged around like an animal, treated to nothing but shitty nutrition bars and cold showers and punches in the face.

Being with Zim in med bay, their own little haven away from Tenn and Tak, had been nice. But, Dib can only handle so much, and getting treated like garbage for the past couple of months was really starting to wear on him.

He towers over Tak, and her glare falters for a second.

“I’m sick of you treating me like shit,” he growls at her. “As if I’m not bringing you someone who can help _you_ , who can make _you_ look good for your leaders. And, you know what—?”

“Incoming transportation,” says the ship’s computer.

Dib looks over. 

In the middle of the cockpit, a light begins to shine, brighter and brighter. He can just barely see the outline of a body form, and then the light dims. There’s a new irken standing in thecenter of the cockpit, a little taller than Tak, dressed like an invader and standing with his hands on his hips and a huge grin on his face. Next to him, a little SIR unit stands at attention.

A moment of stunned silence.

“ _LARB_!” Zim shrieks, and he leaps from his seat and throws himself at the irken. 

Larb.

Similarly, Tenn and Tak absolutely _squeal_ with delight when they recognize Larb.

He accepts the warm welcome with equal warmth, first wrapping his arms around Zim’s waist and tugging him into a tight hug, then opening his arms for Tenn and Tak. They rejoice at seeing him, and the new, jovial attitude in the cockpit immediately sets Dib on edge.

Honestly, he would have preferred an intern.

“I haven’t seen you in years!” Larb says, looking at each irken separately and then letting his eyes stay on Zim. 

He touches a hand to Zim’s antenna, then slides it between his fingers. Zim’s antenna goes lax at the touch and Larb wraps it around his finger, like Dib had seen Tenn and Tak do to each other, back when they were talking. He feels a pit in his stomach as Zim beams at the contact — nothing like the gentle dismissal he’d given Dib not long ago.

“Tell me everything you’ve been up to,” Larb says, and the expression on Zim’s face somehow brightens.

Dib clears his throat.

Larb looks up, then registers that Dib is standing in the cockpit with his hands in cuffs. The other irkens turn to look at him, too, almost like they’d forgotten that he was there. Larb’s SIR unit takes a step forward, its eyes bright and red.

“Is this the captain?” Larb asks, eyes darting to Tenn. “I received a briefing but I thought he was… Iapetun.”

“It’s a long story,” says Dib, stepping forward. “My name is Captain Dib Membrane. I’m an ally.”

He doesn’t know why he said that last part.

“Temporary ally,” Tak is quick to add. “He’s helping us trade for the vice admiral, and then we’re leaving him behind.”

Dib had just been complaining about how much he hated living on this ship. But, when Tak mentions leaving him behind, his eyes dart back to Zim and he feels a pit of regret in his stomach.

Zim doesn’t notice. He’s watching Larb, the ghost of his initial excitement still evident on his face.

“It’s nice to meet you,” says Dib, nodding his head toward Larb.

“Likewise,” says Larb, but Dib can see the disgust, plain in Larb’s face. “Perhaps the iapetun should leave now, though? I need to discuss the mission with my teammates, and I would feel more comfortable if you weren’t around.”

Dib’s brow furrows. “This is just as much my mission as it is theirs.”

“Is it? And what are you getting out of this, besides betraying your superior so that you can benefit, personally?”

Dib takes a step back. “You don’t know everything.”

“I know enough,” says Larb, his eyes narrowed. He flaps a hand at Dib. “Back to your chambers, please. We have sensitive information to discuss, and we don’t need your listening ears.”

Dib’s face goes hot, but he knows he’s outnumbered. Tenn and Tak are glaring at him with almost as much disdain as Larb, and Zim isn’t even looking at him — he’s still staring, dreamy-eyed, at Larb.

“Fine, then,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

He stalks out, half hoping that Zim would follow, but he knows he won’t. He can’t get the expression on Zim’s face out of his mind. 

Since when? Since when did… Dib shakes his head. He has to have forgotten. Irkens don't look at each other like that, they don't… care about each other like that. Sure, Tak had cried at seeing Zim nearly dead after getting that rock thingy, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe she had salt in her eye or something. It didn’t mean that she likes Zim, or that any of them like anyone besides themselves.

He needs to remind himself of that more — irkens aren’t a social species. They’re savage, and bloodthirsty, and they don’t matter to each other the way normal people matter to each other. They don’t need someone to care about. 

Zim probably looks up to Larb. That’s probably it. Just old-fashioned professional admiration, if an irken could even muster that. Anything beyond that is… impossible. It’s impossible.

Aaro told him it's impossible.

Dib stalks back to med bay, reminding himself as he goes that it’s impossible, forgetting that he shouldn’t even care, anyway.

If anything, Dib has a feeling that he is not going to like Larb.

**v.**

Tenn watches the human leave, his back tense and his steps loud. She feels Larb’s eyes on her.

“This was your idea?” he asks.

Tenn’s antennae twitches, and she meets Larb’s gaze. “Yes.”

He watches her for a second, and she can’t tell what he’s thinking. Eventually, he cracks a smile. “Risky.”

She grins back.

“I haven’t seen you since the Assigning!” Zim shouts, and Tenn’s smile just widens.

She can remember her years of academy with Zim and Larb. She and Larb had competed for accolades since practically the moment they’d both been activated, but the rivalry had never been unfriendly. Larb, charming, charismatic, tall for an invader, and, to some, quite handsome, was difficult to dislike.

“I know!” says Larb. “How was your secret mission, by the way?”

“Flawless!” Zim responds, throwing his hands up.

“I want to hear all about it.” Larb tears his gaze from Zim and gives Tak, then Tenn, and serious look. “But first, we need to discuss the mission.”

Tenn watches Tak nod. “The Tallest seem… anxious,” says Tak.

“They are,” says Larb.

“Why?” asks Tenn. “What is there to be anxious about? The mission has gone well so far, and we only delayed making the trade because of Zim’s Salt mission.”

“Yes, well— what?” Larb glances at Zim. “Salt?”

“Yes,” says Zim with a nod. “I retrieved a special stone from Planet Salt for our Tallest, one that they needed desperately.”

“One that they made him throw out the airlock,” says Tak, her arms crossing.

She seems to realize that she’d spoken out loud when her eyes go wide and her antennae drop to her skull. Larb spares her a glance, one that Tenn can’t quite read. His focus seems to still be on Zim, though, and his searching gaze returns to Zim’s face.

“Well,” he says. “This mission is our first priority, now. And we can’t have that… that captain of theirs messing it up. Our Tallest have assigned me to support you as needed and to update you on information important to the mission that our informant is giving us.”

“Who is this informant?” asks Zim. “Someone we can trust?”  


Larb nods. “Our Tallest say the informant is reliable. I have no reason to believe otherwise. In exchange for the information, though, our Tallest are sworn to secrecy and cannot reveal their identity.” 

Tenn exchanges glances with Tak and Zim. Eventually, they all nod.

“Fine,” says Tenn. “I will set a course for Tethys. Tak and Zim will go check the power.”

Larb’s antenna perks in confusion. “The power?”

“Our ship’s energy cores are failing,” says Tak. “They’re even worse now than they were before Salt. We have to monitor their radiation levels at all times.” 

Larb still looks confused. “Have you informed our Tallest of the status of your ship?”

“We just have too many missions,” says Tenn, before Tak can butt in with more disrespectful nonsense. “We don’t have much time to stop for major repairs.”

“I see,” says Larb, and he’s still watching Tak. “I should come with you and take a look.”

“In a moment,” says Tenn. “I’d like a word with you in private, Invader.”

Larb eyes Tenn but nods, and Tak takes the hint and drags a still-beaming Zim from the cockpit.

When the door slides shut again, Tenn turns toward the dashboard. She begins typing in the coordinates.

“So,” says Larb, “what exactly is that thing?”

“A human,” says Tenn, not looking up as she types.

“It seems… quite bold.”

Tenn huffs out a short, quiet laugh. “You have no idea.”

“What is it you need, then?”

She finishes setting a course for Tethys and sits in the pilot’s seat. 

“I need you to keep Zim away from him.”

“Zim?”

Larb approaches and sits on the dashboard. Tenn stares ahead.

“Zim has… the human has given Zim the idea that they share some kind of bond. There was… an incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

Tenn meets Larb’s gaze. She really can’t go spilling all of Zim’s secrets to everyone. Tak was a special exception, and she can’t make exceptions for everyone. It’s too risky for Zim. She looks away again.

“The human attempted to manipulate Zim and Zim was… responsive.”

“Was he?”

“Unfortunately,” says Tenn, resolutely staring through the windshield. “But, with you here… you know him. He trusts you, and he… he cares a great deal about you. I don’t think my words have gotten through to him, but if you speak with him, or at least… at least keep him occupied.”

She looks up at Larb, who’s watching her, his gaze intense. “It would be in his best interest to keep the human away from him.”

“And why is that? What exactly would he do?”

Tenn can’t say, not without jeopardizing Zim’s safety. She trusts Larb, but… Larb is loyal to the Empire. Just like she is, like they all are. If Larb knew, maybe he wouldn’t see Zim’s strange proclivities the same way that Tenn does. Tenn knows what Zim is capable of, but she also knows that… well, she can keep him in check. If he stays with her, she knows that she can keep him safe from his own indiscretions. And she wants to trust that Larb knows that, too, but she just can’t take that risk.

“I cannot have him jeopardizing my mission,” she says eventually. “If you are really here to support us, you will keep that human away from Zim.”

Larb offers Tenn a half smile and thumps his fist to his chest. “As you wish, Agent Tenn,” he says, and he hops off the dashboard and heads for the door.

Before he can make it far, Tenn leaps from her seat and flings her arms around his neck. He pauses, just for a second, before returning the embrace.

“I’m happy to see you,” she says, a strange emotion making her spooch churn and her eyes prick with tears.

“I’m happy to see you, too, Tenn,” says Larb, his arms wrapping around her and holding her tight.


	9. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She is fiction, she’s a curse. She’s a pretty thing on a high, high shelf. You’ve got your eyes open, you know your worth. But, there’s so many things you want for yourself.” - The Crane Wives

**i.**

Zim watches Larb’s tapping foot and forgets what Larb just said.

They’re in the power room, and Larb is on his back, upper body tucked inside the web of machinery below the control panel, lower body sticking out of it, knees bent, foot tapping.

“Don’t think so?”

Zim blinks. “Huh?”

“Did you hear me?” asks Larb.

“No.”

Larb scoots out from inside the labyrinth of fraying wires and broken hardware and sits up. 

“I was saying that you’d save yourselves more time if you actually got this thing fixed than if you kept having to slow down and save energy every time you had a radiation leak.”

Zim, sitting on his knees by Larb, leans forward on his hands. He peers inside, his eyes adjusting to the darkness until he can see every cable.

“Our Tallest have not authorized time off to get more parts.”

“It’s not time off if it’s getting parts for more missions.”  


“Well,” Zim leans back until he’s sitting on his heels again, “it kind of is.”

Larb wipes a stripe of grease off of his forehead with the back of his arm. “If you say so.”

Larb’s SIR reappears from inside the control panel, and it sends a pang of pain through Zim to watch the little bot sit down next to Larb. He swallows.

“Are you going to leave right after we finish the mission?” asks Zim.

“That’s the plan.”

Zim purses his lips. “Maybe… if it is so important, you could come with us to get the parts we need? And you could help us fix it?”

Zim knows it’s transparent, and his face gets warm when Larb smiles. 

“The great Invader Zim needs my help fixing up his own ship?”

Zim frowns, then leans forward again. He reaches inside the computer for one of the wires and light runs the back of his finger along its damaged insulation. The movement causes his shoulder to brush against Larb’s.

“I suppose you’re right,” he says with a sigh, not looking at Larb. “It’s not as if I lack the training or the knowledge.”

“If it would make things go faster,” says Larb, his voice quiet. “Maybe that would make a difference. If I helped you get the ship back to its normal functionality—” Zim scoffs a bit, because, even when it was brand-new, this ship barely functioned “—then you’d be back to taking missions sooner.”

Zim sits back again. “Maybe you should just stay and help us with missions.”

Larb’s smile is still a little smug, and his eyes dance with amusement. “I think being stuck with Tenn and Tak for so long has finally made you humble, Zim.”

Zim bites the inside of his cheek.

He’d pushed Larb out of his head long before the Dome, before Earth, before he’d even been sent to Foodcourtia. But now, Larb was back, and Zim felt like a smeet again, filled with all the confidence in the world until he realized that Larb was looking at him.

Larb had been in all of Zim’s classes in academy. They’d trained together, alongside Tenn and all of their other classmates, for almost their entire smeethood. 

Zim had few notable memories of being in academy. His smeethood had been defined by monotony: wake up, train, go to sleep, day in and day out until he was put on the military engineering track, away from Larb and Tenn. Larb had made it fun, as fun as living underground and training every moment of every day could be. Larb could make anything fun.

The more Zim thinks about it, the more the memories of academy came back to him: sleeping in a single dorm with hundreds of other irkens packed into bunks around him, sitting for meals once a week or so and scarfing down enough food, as fast as they could, to sustain themselves until the next supper came around. He’d happily done it all, for the sake of his Empire and out of devotion to his dear Tallest Miyuki. And, he’d done it because Larb made it fun.

He had more fun, now, with Tenn and Tak. But, he still felt… somewhat on the outside. When the two of them were getting along, it was like there was this invisible, impenetrable wall between him and them. Being on the outside of the wall wasn’t a particularly good feeling, which he now realizes even more, because no one has ever been more inviting than Larb.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” he says, when he finally becomes aware of the silence around them. 

Larb blinks. 

“I know,” he says.

Larb watches him for a moment, saying nothing. Zim watches him right back, a little uncomfortable, but not unwilling to push aside the growing feeling that— what? He can’t quite place it. He’d missed Larb, is all, and seeing him again, is, well—

“I can’t believe they sent you to Salt.”

Zim frowns. “Why not?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“Well, I handled myself just fine, actually. Maybe _you_ would not have had such a favorable outcome, but my mission—”

“That isn’t— I just am surprised, is all,” says Larb, antennae bobbing a little. “They never want anything from Salt.”

“It was a special occasion, perhaps.” 

“Were they pleased that you succeeded?”

“Oh, yes,” says Zim, flapping a hand. “You know how much they worship me. They were so grateful, they were practically falling all over themselves to thank me.”  


“Uh huh,” says Larb, a small smile on his face. “I would expect nothing less for their favorite.”

“You know, I think I actually might be their favorite,” agrees Zim.

Larb laughs, a confusing reaction, but Zim enjoys it, nonetheless. He hasn’t heard Larb laugh in a long time, and it’s — it unsettles him, but in a pleasant way, and he laughs a little bit, too.

He’s distracted when the door opens and footsteps approach, and it’s only when Larb looks up and frowns that Zim realizes that the person who’d come to see them wasn’t Tenn or Tak.

“Did you get permission to come in here?” Larb asks, his voice suddenly hard.

“Uh.” Zim turns his head and makes quick eye contact with the Dib, holding a soda and cocking his head. “That’s not really how things work around here.”

Larb stands, so Zim does, too. He waits there awkwardly, his gaze shifting between Larb and Dib. He notices a soda can in Dib’s hand.

“Is that for me?” he asks.

“Oh,” Dib looks at the can. “Yeah, actually, I was just on my way over here and I, um, grabbed it.”

He offers the can to Zim. Larb bats Zim’s hand away as he reaches for it.  


“We’re actually busy in here,” says Larb. “Why don’t you go back to your quarters?”

Dib looks over at the control panel and sees that the hatch is open, Larb’s SIR now standing guard by it, in case Dib comes closer. He looks back at Zim. 

“Are you fixing it?”

“What we are doing is none of your concern.” Larb steps to the side, so now he’s standing in front of Zim. Zim peeks over Larb’s shoulder at Dib and says nothing, in part because he isn’t sure what he wants to say, and in part because — um, he’d forgotten how tall Larb was. “Go on and get out of our way.”

Dib’s eyes narrow. “You know, I’ve been living on this ship for months. If I wanted to sabotage them, I would have done it by now.”

To Zim’s surprise, Larb steps forward and shoves Dib back. “You’re not fooling anyone, human. Do you understand? I know about your little plan, how you intend to dispose of your superior so you can take his position.”

“That’s not—”

“You’re a disgrace. A traitor. You’ve got no loyalty, not to the planet that took you in, and certainly not to any of us. If you were an irken, you would be deactivated. Our people know when someone is disloyal, and we would have sensed your treachery. We would have known not to trust you the moment we saw you.”

Dib takes a step back, his face red. He looks at Zim, who looks away.

“You trust me now, don’t you?” asks Dib, his voice hard. “You need me for this mission, in case you forgot.”

“And the second this mission is over, we won’t see you ever again,” hisses Larb. “We have no interest in fraternizing with the likes of you. Not now, and not after you betray the planet that took you in. Our reliance on one another ends the moment this mission is over.”

There’s another long, painful pause. Dib’s face is a deep, furious red. He isn’t looking at Zim anymore, just glaring at Larb.

“Fine, if that’s what you think,” says Dib eventually, turning away. “I’ll be going, then.”

The Dib leaves, and Zim listens as his footsteps get softer, as the door opens and closes with a gentle _whoosh_.

Larb looks over his shoulder at Zim. 

“He may be helping us, but do not lose sight of what he is.”

Zim meets Larb’s gaze and then looks away. “I know,” he says. “Disloyal.”

He feels Larb’s hands on his shoulders, and he looks up. Larb’s face is right there, his dark eyes, square jaw, thick, long antennae. Zim gulps.

“Not only disloyal,” says Larb. “Worse. He is a liar. He’s cheating his own people to their detriment, possibly to their downfall. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Zim stares at Larb’s mouth as he talks and feels a hundred conflicting feelings at once.  


“He is worse than a traitor, worse than treasonous. He is someone who will only ever care for himself, who will hurt or manipulate _anyone_ to get what he wants. He isn’t like us. He has no one in his life whom he cares for. You know that, right?”

Zim can only drop his chin in a nod, his breath frozen in his chest. Larb’s grip loosens on his shoulders.

He looks up and Larb is watching him, looking at him like he knows him. 

“Trust me, Zim,” says Larb, running his hand along one of Zim’s antennae, twirling it around his fingers. “It’s for the best that you stay away from him.”

Zim nods again, enjoying the feeling of Larb’s gentle fingers. He takes a breath, a knot of consternation still tight in his chest, but he reminds himself that Larb is right. He’s always known that what Larb is saying is right.

**ii.**

Turns out, Dib actually really fucking hates Larb.

The second Larb arrived on the ship, the entire atmosphere changed. If Dib didn’t feel like he was outnumbered before, he certainly does now. And, worse than that, he feels like Larb’s distrust of Dib was wearing off onto the other irkens. Even Zim.

Sure, Tak and Tenn and Zim had never really trusted him much. Which is fine. He’d captured Tenn after catching her sneaking around in his ship, made a shady deal with them that, by some miracle, has kept them from killing him, and caused that whole stir with Zim. Still, at least before, he felt like he could sit with them in the cockpit and roll his eyes while they wrestled or played games or whatever.

At least he could get away with playing cards with Zim.

Since getting kicked out of the power room, he’s now constantly being sent to his room by a suspicious Larb. He can’t come into the cockpit, wander around the ship, even go to the bathroom without Larb instantly on his heels. It’s unbearable.

Besides that, Larb fits seamlessly with this group. Not like Dib _wants_ to fit in with these bastards, but, seriously, it’s like Larb can do no wrong. He makes them laugh and regales them with his own invasion stories (ones which, Dib hates to think, are probably not as exaggerated as Zim’s). He has them eating out of the palm of his hand, which makes them all the more excited to back him up when he kicks Dib out of the cockpit and send him to be bored and lonely in his own room.

Once, Larb says nothing when Dib steps into the cockpit. He’s sitting in the pilot’s seat. Zim is in his lap. They’re playing cards.

“Can I join?” Dib asks, approaching. 

Zim is quiet, but the deferential look he shoots Larb says everything Dib needs to hear. 

“Never mind,” he adds, speaking loudly so he can get his words out over Larb’s rejection. “I’ll just sit back here.”

Larb makes a small _hm_ sound as Dib takes his usual seat, one he hasn’t taken in a while. 

“Fine,” he says eventually, and Dib counts it as a win.

Tenn comes in a little later, stretching and yawning. She sits herself down with Zim and Larb and joins their game, and Dib just sits there with his arms crossed. 

Fine, then. Larb doesn’t like him, and he apparently doesn’t trust him. Dib can admit that he’s untrustworthy. Still. He hates Larb.

Before Tak can come in and make some other stupid comment to Dib about how smelly or ugly or dumb he is, he gets up and goes back to med bay, ears going hot at the sound of a raucous laugh from Zim. 

When the doors slide shut, Dib stops himself. What is he doing, getting pissed about all of this? He’s been on this ship for too long. He’s forgotten what’s important. What matters is getting himself home, getting Lobo out of the way, and moving himself up. Captaining the _Titan_ had been fun for a while, but if he didn’t have fucking Lobo to answer to — well, it would mean fewer black eyes, at the very least.

It’s not like he likes any of those irkens. In fact, he actively hates almost all of them, and the other — well, maybe he’s just nostalgic, seeing Zim again. He doesn’t need to waste time dwelling on it. All that matters is that they trust him to hold up his end of the deal. Which he will, he thinks. He will. He has no other choice.

Dib heads to med bay and lies down in his bed. Soon, he’ll be back to having his Captain’s chambers, to being able to come and go and do whatever he wants, to not having his hands in cuffs every second of every day. He needs to remember that — this is almost over, and then he can go back to his normal life. An even better life, actually. He’ll surely get promoted to vice admiral with Lobo gone and, even if he doesn’t, he can happily captain his ship again until Aaro retires, and then, as is his birthright, he’ll fill Aaro’s position as the admiral of the fleet.

Socializing had never been Dib’s strong suit, even, he recalls, on Earth. He didn’t leave a lot of friends behind, put it that way. And, with Aaro, he came to realize that he was more fit to the Iapetun way of life: independence and self-sufficiency. He didn’t spend time with other kids when he was growing up, and Aaro had assured him that that was fine. In fact, it’s how things should be. All Dib needs is Aaro, really. He isn’t some pack-minded irken, some nameless drone who answers to their Tallest and does as they are told without question.

He doesn’t need someone the way that the irkens need each other. Why would he? He isn’t some bullish child, desperate for a wrestling partner. He doesn’t need the constant physical connection that came with lying all over each other all the time. He isn’t like them, he’s… more refined, more mature. A more advanced life form, like the iapetuns that taught him everything he knew. 

His mouth still twists as he thinks about Zim sitting with Larb, Larb’s finger playing in Zim’s lax antennae, their card game in front of them as they laughed and played. And, besides, any real affection that they might appear to feel for each other is… that’s not real, either. Irkens don’t understand love the way other life forms do.

Dib wonders if Aaro misses him. Is he looking for him? Is he worried?

He can only hope that Aaro will feel sorry for him when they reunite. He’d have to, right? Dib knows he looks terrible — his facial hair is growing out, and so is the hair on the sides of his head. He’s unkempt, his uniform is wrinkled, and he has dark, heavy bags under his eyes.

Aaro would pity him, Dib is sure. Just like he had when he’d rescued him from those freaks that had been experimenting on him. He wouldn’t be angry. Dib shuts his eyes. He wouldn’t be angry, right?

Dib’s stomach drops as he entertains the idea. Aaro doesn’t get angry often, but when he does, it’s… Dib shakes himself. It’s not worth thinking about.

Aaro rarely gets angry, anyway. And, usually, it just resulted in Dib’s being sent to his room for a few days without anything to eat. Aaro wasn’t one for beatings or shouting — he was collected, and Dib could admire that. And, looking back, he knew that he’d acted up as a child, been ungrateful, failed to see what Aaro was really offering him as a lifelong mentor in the Intervention Force. But, now, Dib is an adult. He knows how lucky he is to have been rescued by the iapetuns, to have been kept by them. He doesn’t need Aaro disciplining him and, soon, he won’t have Lobo there to beat the shit out of him whenever he thinks Dib is being disrespectful. It’ll all be fine, Dib assures himself. There isn’t any reason to start to worry now.

Besides, his only other choice would be to back out of the deal and get killed by Larb. And, there was no way Dib was going to let Larb, of all the irkens in all of space, be the one to kill him.

He wonders how angry Aaro will be when Lobo gets taken. Despite himself, he shivers.

**iii.**

Tak sits on the upper deck of the cockpit, half-paying attention to where they’re going, her cheek resting on her fist.

Despite herself, she feels guilty. 

She knows that Tenn’s delight at seeing Larb again doesn’t completely supersede how deeply wounded she is by having another operative joining her mission. Tak thinks that the fact that it’s Larb hurts as much as it helps — sure, Tenn was excited to see their friend, but… Larb is no intern. He was definitely chosen for this task because of his skill as an invader, an appointment that Tenn had, once upon a time. 

Tak knows that, deep down, Tenn wants to be an invader again. It was what she’d wanted since she was a smeet, what she claims she was born to be. Hearing about Larb’s successes, his dazzling career of conquering planet after planet, must be weighing on her.

And, Tak’s refusal to even look at her the past few days probably isn’t helping matters much, either. But, Tak is tired. She’s tired of showering Tenn with hollow reassurances. She’s tired of having to follow Tenn’s bullshit logic around why the Tallest make them suffer. Maybe Zim’s near-death on Salt was the final straw but, really, telling Tenn what she wanted to hear had never been easy.

The door opens, startling Tak. She’d thought everyone was asleep.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Be my guest.”

Larb settles down next to her in the seat that the Dib used to sit in. He isn’t around as much anymore, probably because Zim and Larb are joined at the hip these days. Larb’s SIR unit stands at his feet.

“So,” says Larb. “How’ve you been?”

“Busy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yup.”

It’s not that she doesn’t like Larb. They’d both started invader training in the same class on Devastis, and while she certainly never found him to be as charming as everyone else did, she could appreciate him for the soldier that he was. He’d never bothered her much, and she was genuinely grateful that of all the irkens out there, he was the one the Tallest chose to be their temporary teammate.

“Your ship is a floating piece of garbage, by the way.”

Tak’s eyes widen and she barks out a laugh. She doesn’t know why, but she keeps laughing, and Larb laughs along with her.

“Good luck fixing the radiation problem, by the way” she says.

“I’m trying to fix the radiation _sensor_ problem, first,” Larb shoots back with a laugh. “I have no idea how you guys manage to make this thing fly.”

Tak snorts. “We do what we can.”

Larb quiets down a little, and Tak feels his eyes on her. She sneaks a look at him out of the corner of her eye, then looks away.

“Hey,” says Larb, “beats living in a Zhook Cruiser all by yourself.”

Curious, Tak tilts her head toward Larb again. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”

Larb shrugs, then gestures to his robot. “Just me and SIR.”

At the sound of its name, the robot hops up and sits itself sideways in Larb’s lap. Tak’s antenna bobs up in amusement. 

“You teach it that trick?”

Larb’s face is dark with embarrassment, and Tak laughs. 

“You _did_!” she shouts. “You programmed your SIR to cuddle.”

“It’s not cuddling,” says Larb, his voice low. “It’s just… forget it.”

Tak watches Larb for a second. She turns her gaze to his SIR, sitting upright on Larb’s lap. An old grief stirs in her.

“We had to give up our SIR units when we got to the Dome.”

Larb looks down at his SIR. “I thought so, when I didn’t… when I didn’t see them.”

There’s an uneasy pause.

“Why?” asks Larb.

Tak shrugs. “The Tallest said that we didn’t need them anymore. There’s a SIR event they do before the big battles at night, so they took them for that, I guess. Well, they took Tenn's SIR for it. I’m pretty sure they just took Zim’s and mine apart, since they weren’t official SIR units to begin with.”

Larb doesn’t say anything for a second, just looks at his SIR, pensive.

Really, Tak didn’t like to think about getting MiMi taken away from her. It was a little embarrassing, how attached she’d gotten to that little bot in her time on Dirt. Getting MiMi taken away from her — remembering how confused MiMi had been when they’d taken her from Tak’s hands, staying up those first nights, wondering whether they’d been merciful when they deactivated her — it made her remember how weak she really was. 

Although, at least she’d never trained MiMi to sit on her lap with her. She looks down at her own lap, watching her hands to ball into fists, the latent anger waking up again.

“Fuck the Tallest,” says Larb suddenly, and Tak gasps.

She whips her head up and stares at Larb, who’s looking ahead, through the windshield.

“What did you say?” she whispers.

“I said, fuck the Tallest.”

Tak can’t say anything, she can only blink.

Larb watches her, gauging her reaction.

Eventually, she speaks: “You would say that about your own leaders?”

Larb scoffs. “They aren’t leaders. The only thing they can do is conquer, and the only reason they can do that is because they have billions of irkens willing to fight to the death for them.”

Tak feels frozen.

“Conquering is easy when you have a bunch of brainwashed cyborgs willing to do anything for you. But, being a leader?” Larb shakes his head. “No way. They’re not leaders. They’re just lazy smeets who sit around giving orders all day.”

Tak feels like her eyes are going to pop out of her head. 

“I’ve been other places, Tak,” says Larb, turning to look at her. “I’ve seen the worlds they want to destroy. I’ve met the people that we’ve slaughtered, in the name of the Empire.”

He barks a single, humorless laugh.

“None of it is for the Empire. It’s all for them. The rest of us get nothing.”

Tak can’t say anything, still. She just stares at Larb.

“The civilizations I’ve invaded are full of good people. People who like their leaders, sure, but they don’t expect to spend their whole lives serving them. On some of the planets I’ve seen, even, the leaders serve the _people._ They even call themselves — servants. Servants to the public, to their planet. Not like Irk, where we all just serve the Tallest.”

Larb is glaring at Tak, and she’s disarmed by his intensity.

“It’s no different for us than it is for the people we colonize. We get the same deal, you know? We’re just brainwashed into believing we _want_ to do it, that, for some stupid reason, we’re _happy_ to go to war for the Tallest, to break our backs serving them, to die for them.”

Larb shakes his head, scoffs, and Tak feels her shock ebbing, but she doesn’t want to interrupt.

“Every mission I go on, I find people happier than I am. And I’m an _invader_ , for crying out loud. I have more autonomy than anyone shorter than me, at the very _least_. I can’t even imagine being some… some service drone, some leaf-waver. I have it so good, and it’s nothing compared to some of the societies I’ve seen. People get to choose their roles in society, they get to… they get to…”

“What?” Tak whispers.

Larb looks at Tak. He leans toward her.

“Do you know what love is?” he whispers conspiratorially.

Tak shakes her head.

“It’s when… you know how in academy, we all lived in the bunks?”

Tak nods.

“It’s like that, but you live in a small bunk, just with the ones you love. It… it’s like, the people you care about the most. Your favorite ones.”

“Oh,” says Tak softly. “Love?”

“Yeah,” says Larb. 

“For your favorites?”

“Uh huh.”

Tak looks down at her hands again.

“The Tallest keep these things from us,” says Larb. “They make the Control Brains tell us we don’t make bonds, that we are strong in numbers but cannot sacrifice our loyalty by becoming loyal to each other. That we can’t _want_ anything but glory for Irk and the Tallest.”

Tak blinks, her spooch pounding in her chest.

“I think it’s untrue,” says Larb. “I don’t think we can’t form bonds. I think we _can_ , and I think they’re scared of what will happen if we do.”

Tak’s face begins to burn. She meets Larb’s gaze and takes a deep breath.

“I think so, too,” she says, her meek voice betraying just how afraid she is.

She didn’t think she’d know anyone who felt the way she did. It terrifies her, to think that other irkens feel the way she does. Her antennae go rigid. What if the Tallest knew that she and Larb were talking about this? What would they do to her?

Tears prick at her eyes, but she swallows and tries to take control of herself. Larb watches her. With her fear comes exhaustion.

“I’m so tired,” she whispers.

“I know,” says Larb.  


“I’m so tired of them,” she repeats, her voice wobbling. “What they’ve done to us. What they make us do to each other.”

“I know.”

“They made us drive Zim to Salt. We had to send him down there and— and— I didn’t know if he was going to die again, or—”

“Again?”

Tak squeezes her eyes shut. “He fought the cancri when we were in the Dome,” she says. “He had to get reactivated.”

She eventually opens her eyes and looks over at Larb. He looks sick. 

“They opened my PAK up in front of the entire Dome,” she says, because now that she’s started, she can’t stop. “They reset my cerebral connection and I almost killed a snarl beast, and I didn’t even— I had no control, and when I came back online it was— it was—”

The tears are pouring from her face now. She leans forward, her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. 

“I can’t do this anymore, with the two of them. They still think there’s nothing wrong, they don’t _see_ —”

“Hey, shh.” Larb is knelt beside her when she looks up, a firm but gentle hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, no, please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset, I just— what you said before, about the rock, having to throw it out the airlock, it just… it seemed like you understood—”

“I understand,” whispers Tak. “I understand exactly what they’re doing to us, and Tenn and Zim refuse to even consider it, and I just…” She shakes her head. “I’m so alone.”

“You’re not alone,” says Larb quietly. “You’re not, Tak.”

“I feel like I am,” Tak whispers. “I feel like I’m the only one in the entire cosmos, sometimes.”

“I know,” says Larb. He rubs at her back, squeezes her shoulder, presses his forehead against her temple. “I know.” 

“I’ve been thinking about, just…” 

She doesn’t want to say. 

She swallows as the tears keep coming.

“What?”

“Just pressing the button,” she blurts.

Larb’s hand freezes on her back. She squeezes her eyes shut, causing more tears to spill down her face. She regrets saying it the instant it comes out of her mouth.

“I have, too,” says Larb quietly.

Tak opens her eyes. She meets Larb’s gaze, and he looks so pitiful.

“You have?”

“I just…” Larb takes a breath. “I would trade my SIR for what you have in a moment, Tak.”

Take watches him, her eyes still swimming. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do,” whispers Larb. “I do. I know, it isn’t easy, being surrounded by people who don’t understand, but, come on. Be reasonable, Tak. At least they’re people. I’ve thought… I’ve thought a life alone, would warrant a death alone. And sometimes… sometimes it felt like time was standing still and I was alone forever. I just wanted it to end.”

Tak swallows and swipes delicately at her eyes.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” she whispers. “I could never just press it, just leave them behind, it… it wouldn’t be fair. They need me. Even if they hate me sometimes, I just couldn’t… I couldn’t just leave them.”

“Precisely,” murmurs Larb.

There’s another long pause. Larb stays at Tak’s side. He reaches for her hands and holds them gently in his.

“No one needs me,” he says softly, staring at their joined hands.

“That’s not true.”

“It is. It is true.”

“Zim needs you. And so does Tenn and so do I.”

“You haven’t seen me,” Larb whispers. “You haven’t seen me in years.”

“We’ve needed you, for so long. We've been... miserable. We need you now, especially. Stay with us.”

“You know I have no control over that.”

“I wish you did.” Tak sniffles. “Zim does need you, you know. He wants someone like you.”

Larb looks up at Tak. 

“He’s so confused,” Tak whispers. “Tenn worries he’ll get himself hurt and, maybe… maybe he will, that human really would be bad for him, but… I just think…” She purses her lips for a moment, gathering the courage. “I just think if you were here with him for longer, he’d understand that the things he wants are… if you could ever, if you think…”

She can’t put the words together, wants desperately to betray Zim if it means saving him but knows she can’t.

“I understand,” says Larb softly.

“Do you?” asks Tak, because, really, she isn’t even sure she can articulate what she’s asking. She just feels it, deep in her bones, something she longs for that she knows Zim desires, too. Something she desperately wants for the both of them.

“Yes,” says Larb softly. “It’s love, but — a different kind. A special kind. I’ve seen it, on other planets, and it’s…” Larb chokes out a quiet, strangled sound. “It’s beautiful.” 

Tak feels her spooch thudding in her chest. She imagines it — a place for people like her and Tenn, living together — bunking together like Larb had described, just the two of them, or the two of them and Zim, and Larb. It would be perfect, and she could fall asleep in Tenn’s arms each night, greet each morning with her. 

Her old fantasies fade away and she thinks about it, really thinks about it, and her eyes swim again. She pushes the thought away.

“Well,” she says, taking another deep breath. “I suppose I just… I could just see it, for the two of you.”

“I could, too,” says Larb.

She looks at his face, open and honest. “You could?”

“Yes. But I… I can’t, Tak. I couldn’t make that promise to him only to be reassigned to something else. I have no control.”

Tak sniffles. “It’s so unfair.”

“I know it is. It’s completely unfair.”

Tak wipes at her face again, and she looks at Larb, his own face broken with sorrow. 

“And you?” asks Larb quietly. “This is something you want for yourself?”

She laughs a little at that. “Yes,” she says. 

“What’s funny?”

Tak shakes her head. “You’ll think it’s ridiculous.”

Larb is quiet for a moment, watching Tak’s face.

“Tenn,” he says.

Tak stares at her hands, her fingers interlaced with Larb’s. She wants to speak but can’t, and then the emotions roil within her again and she buries her face in her hands and weeps.

Larb holds her, rubs her shoulder, pets her antennae. She cries quietly, but the tears spill in a steady, heavy stream. She rarely cries, and now she was doing this, and, plus, there was that obscene display, right in front of the human, on the day of Zim’s Salt mission.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Tak murmurs.

“You’re not,” says Larb, his firm again. “You aren’t losing your mind, Tak.”

“She’ll never think the way we do,” says Tak. “I’ll always come second to the Tallest.”

“You don’t know that.”

Tak shakes her head. “Of all the terrible things they’ve put me through, this is the worst.”

“You have to have faith that she’ll understand someday. You can help her.”

“I’ve tried!” Tak snaps, surprising Larb. “I’ve tried, and nothing ever comes of it! All it does is make her angry at me, or me at her!”

Larb’s hands squeeze hers, and her body is in physical pain. Her breaths are coming shorter and her muscles ache and her spooch feels like it’s stopped pumping blood through her body.

“It’s going to be alright, Tak,” says Larb, brushing the tears off her cheeks. “Someday, she’ll understand.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” says Larb. “If you love her, she’ll understand.”

Tak swallows. “I fail to understand your logic,” she says. “She’ll always love the Tallest more than me.”

“She doesn’t love the Tallest,” says Larb firmly. “That isn’t what love is. She loves you, and she loves Zim.”

“She let Zim go to Salt. She was willing to let the Tallest send him to his death.”

“I know,” says Larb. “But, have sympathy. It’s a lot to unlearn, isn’t it?”

Tak sighs. “Yes.”

“It isn’t easy, realizing that… that the things we’ve done for them haven’t been because they’re so powerful or so knowing, but just because they convinced us that they were. Because we listened to them.”

Tak shakes her head. “I can’t believe I was ever happy to serve them.”

“It’s what we were born believing,” says Larb. “We can change, but… we have to be patient for those that are taking longer.”

“I know,” says Tak. “I just… I know, but. I want her to understand now. I want both of them to.”

“They will, one day. Just give them time.”

There’s another short pause.

“Are you angry with her because of Salt?”

Tak nods. “We fought about it.”

Larb mirrors Tak’s nod. “I understand why you’re upset with her. I can’t imagine it’s easy.”

Tak wipes at her eyes again. “No,” she says quickly. “No, it isn’t.”

She looks at Larb and thinks that he’s right. At least she has Tenn to be angry with and Zim to worry about.

“I wish you could stay with us,” she whispers.

“Me too,” Larb whispers back.

“Don’t push the button,” Tak whispers, thinking about the deactivation button on her own arm. “If I have to have faith that Tenn will come around, you have to have faith that you’ll be with us again.”

Larb cracks a tiny smile. “Okay,” he says. “It’s a deal, then.”

Tak nods. “Good.”

“Alright, then.”

“Okay.”

They watch each other for a moment, and Tak gives an uneasy laugh. Larb laughs a little, too, and he stands, brushing nonexistent dirt off of the pants of his uniform. 

“Got emotional there, for a second,” he says.

“Yes, well, we don’t need to talk about it any more.”

“No, I don’t think so, either.”

She sniffles softly, and Larb takes his seat again. Tak takes a few more sniffling breaths before her breathing becomes even again, and she and Larb sit in silence as she considers the conversation they’d just had.

Love. 

She thinks about it. A name, finally, for how she feels. It feels… liberating, to know that so many others in all the different universes that Larb had travelled to feel the same way she does. She thinks about saying it to Tenn. _I love you_. She wants to say it to her now. 

She thinks of what Larb had said about living and dying alone. She never wants to die alone. She wonders what it had been like for Zim in the Dome — but she remembers, he’d said it was quick and painful. She hates to imagine that any of them will be alone when they die. She thinks of Tenn, if they were ever to get reassigned, if anything were to happen, when Tak wasn’t there—

She stands up.

“I’m going to have a short nap,” she says.

“Okay,” says Larb.

“I will wake Zim up and send him in to keep you company.”

Larb gives her an awkward smile. “It’s alright,” he says. “Don’t disturb him. I’m used to being on my own, I don’t — I really don’t mind it for a little while. I have SIR.”

“I’m going to send him in.”

Larb sighs. “Okay.”

Tak makes her way to her bunk. She knocks three times on Zim’s door and it opens. He peers at her, blinking at the harsh light of the room.

“Zim,” she whispers. “Get up.”

“What?”

“Go on, get up. I’m going to sleep, and you’ll need to go stay with Larb in the cockpit.”

Zim scoffs and rubs at his eyes. “Why do you need me to get up? Larb can handle driving.”

“Just go, Zim, come on. He’s all on his own.”

Zim shuffles out of his bunk and lands on his feet next to Tak. 

“Fine,” he says, and he stomps off.

Tak waits for him to leave, then turns and knocks on Tenn’s bunk. Tenn opens it, looking just as sleepy as Zim.

“What’s happening?” she asks, her voice raspy.

“Can I come in?”

“You—” Tenn looks taken aback. “Um, okay. Yes.”

Tak hops up into Tenn’s bunk and slides the door shut. She lays on her side and says nothing.

“What is it, Tak?” asks Tenn, suspicious.

She has a right to be. They haven’t really talked since their fight over Zim, and, last time they had any kind of conversation, Tak hadn’t exactly been kind.

“Can we forget it all?” Tak asks. 

She’s rattled, and she knows Tenn can tell.

“Wh— forget what?”

“Fighting, and… we haven’t talked properly in weeks, not since… can we forget about it all, please? I want to get back to normal.”

Tenn looks confused. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, um. Yes. I would like to go back to normal, too.”

“Okay,” says Tak, and she presses her lips to Tenn’s.

Tenn kisses her back, fierce, like she’s been wanting it as much as Tak has. Tak rolls herself on top of Tenn and pours every bit of desperation she feels into their kiss. Tenn gives it right back to her, and soon they’re both panting and gripping each other.

“I want to be with you at the end, Tenn,” Tak whispers.

“What?”

She can’t say what she wants to say, so she tries her hardest to make her point with different words. “I want to hold you when you go. I want to be there when it happens.”

“Tak, you’re being inappropriate,” says Tenn. 

“I know I am,” says Tak. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Enough talking,” says Tenn, and Tak just nods in agreement before diving back in.

Tenn is fast asleep while Tak lies awake, her conversation with Larb still occupying her mind. 

She listens for the cadence of Tenn’s blood pumping through her veins, the rhythm of her breaths. She curls herself around Tenn, laying her head on Tenn’s shoulder and draping her arm across Tenn’s chest.

“I love you, Tenn,” she whispers, so quietly that she can barely hear herself say it.

It sounds right, she realizes. 

She says it one more time, even quieter, and then squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friend recently introduced me to the most perfect zim-centric vort dogs song by the crane wives and i've been listening to them nonstop since


	10. The Things We Lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don't wanna call you in the nighttime. Don’t wanna give you all my pieces. Don’t wanna hand you all my trouble. Don’t wanna give you all my demons. You’ll have to watch me struggle from several rooms away, but tonight I'll need you to stay.” - 21 Pilots

**i.**

Tak watches Larb carefully as he presses the button to call the Tallest.

“My Tallest,” says Larb, saluting as he does, antennae wiggling in deference, “we are nearing the planet Tethys. We await your instruction.”

He’s good, Tak thinks.

The Tallest are as they were last time, standing upright, surrounded by guards, not a drone in sight. 

“You will arrive on the outskirts of the research base,” says Tallest Red. “You have the coordinates, and you will see it upon arrival — it’s the only campus on the planet. Land a mile or so away, and you should be undetected. Our informant told us that the security at the base is fairly lax, so don’t expect any difficulty getting there.”

Tak nods, and she peeks over to see Zim, Tenn, and Larb listening intently. Something about this doesn’t feel right. Tak has no inclination to trust the human over whoever this informant is — not because she trusts the Tallest’s judgment, but because she has no reason to believe that she can trust what the human has to say, either. Still, this sudden change of plan, these nonspecific instructions… something doesn’t feel right.

“The captain will enter the campus and go to the vice admiral’s office. You will sneak around the back, avoiding any detection, and drop in through the window once the captain is in position. There, you will quietly capture the vice admiral, kill the captain, and escape out the window. You must be quick and quiet, and you must return to the ship and flee as quickly as you can.”

There’s a short pause. 

“Kill… the captain?” Zim asks.

“Will that be a problem?” asks Tallest Purple.

“Of course not, my Tallest,” says Tenn quickly. “We will inform you when we have captured the vice admiral.”

“Bring him to Vort for questioning immediately,” says Tallest Purple. “Do not let anyone follow you.”

“Yes, my Tallest,” say the irkens in unison. 

They salute and sign off.

“Why…?” Zim begins.

Tak leans back against the dashboard and crosses her arms.

“He’s been with us too long,” Tenn says thoughtfully. “He was there when Zim got hurt on Salt. He probably knows too much.” She avoids Zim’s gaze. “It’s in the best interest of the Empire if we kill him.”

Zim looks from Tenn to Tak to Larb. “But…”

“He isn’t trustworthy,” Larb agrees, and Tak has to nod as well. “Who knows that he won’t send a fleet after us the second we grab the vice admiral? If we want to make this a clean job, we need to make sure he doesn’t make it.”

Zim looks back at Tak. “We made a deal with him.”

Tak shrugs. “So, we’re breaking it. Tallest’s orders.”

“Tenn’s right, Zim. He saw what happened to you on Salt,” says Larb. “And, besides, who knows what else he’s got planned. We can’t trust that he won’t try the same thing with us when we get to Tethys. We’ll keep him around until the deal is done, and then we’ll kill him once he’s served his purpose.”

Zim says nothing, just stares at the floor.

“It makes the most sense, Zim,” says Tak gently. 

Larb nods.

“Personally, I was going to suggest we do it, anyway,” Tenn adds. “That human has been nothing but a pain for all of us since we met him.”

Zim wrings his hands a little. “I suppose you’re right,” he says, but Tak can sense the hesitation.

Poor Zim. He must be so confused.

Larb takes a step forward and places a hand on Zim’s shoulder. Zim looks up and meets his eye, looking terribly conflicted.

“Once the mission is over, we’ll get those parts and spruce up the ship,” says Larb.

His hand stays on Zim’s shoulder, massaging gently. Eventually, he reaches up to rub Zim’s antenna.

“It’s for the best, Zim,” says Larb. 

Zim looks at Larb for a while, then nods, batting Larb’s hand away gently. “I suppose you’re right,” he says quietly. “I’m going to… go grab a snack.”

“Okay,” says Tenn softly.

Zim leaves quietly, awkwardly. Tak, Tenn, and Larb watch him go.

“What’s going on with him?” Larb eventually asks. “Why… why does this bother him?”

“He’s been like this the whole time,” says Tak. “He wants that silly human to like him.”

Larb frowns. “But why? Why the _human_?”

“He—”

“Because he’s confused,” says Tenn, shifting so that she’s facing Tak.

Tak catches Tenn’s eye for a second, and an instant of understanding passes between them.

Right. Tenn doesn’t know about the conversation Tak had with Larb the other night. And Tak really doesn’t want to tell her about it.

“He used to know the human,” says Tak softly. “That’s all. He just has some old feelings, it seems, because they used to be enemies.”

“He probably wishes he could be responsible for the human’s demise himself, like he originally wanted to be,” adds Tenn. 

“Yes, he must want that,” agrees Tak.

Larb watches the two of them for a moment, then shakes his head.

“If you say so,” he says.

“Once the human is gone, Zim will forget all about him,” says Tak, and she means it. Zim has a selective memory for these kinds of things. “He won’t remember that alien at all, once we’ve killed him.”

“You’re probably right,” says Larb. He takes a breath and rolls his shoulders back. “I’m going to go talk to him.”

Larb leaves, too, his SIR unit marching along behind him. 

“You almost told him,” says Tenn. 

“I slipped up,” says Tak.

“I only told you because I thought you’d keep quiet about it,” says Tenn, angry.

Tak’s heart softens, even as Tenn glares at her. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I would never do anything to compromise Zim’s safety.”  
“You should be more careful.”

Tak steps into Tenn’s space and kisses her. “I will.” 

Tenn steps back. “Our Tallest could call at any second.”

“Sorry,” repeats Tak, and even as she says it, the word feels hollow.

**ii.**

Zim steps out of the cockpit. He takes a few steps toward the kitchen, then stops. He stares in the other direction, where the med bay is. Where the Dib is. He takes a deep breath. His spooch pounds in his chest.

He needs to go beat the shit out of Tak. He needs to do something. He feels like he’s drowning, like he’s sprinting, running for his life, all the chaos in the world nipping right at his heels—

He’s engulfed by feeling and, for a moment, he stands still and feels nothing but blind rage.

He doesn’t know how long he’s standing there, fists clenched, chest caving in on itself, mind collapsing, when Larb and his SIR step into the hallway.

“Zim?” he asks. “I thought you were getting a snack.”

Zim blinks, and the fury begins to fade. He looks at Larb. “I am.”

“What’s the matter?”

Zim swallows. His throat feels dry. “Nothing.”

“Zim.”

Truthfully, Zim doesn’t really know what’s the matter. He can’t put all the pieces together right now, and he doesn’t — he can’t think it through. He’s still too angry, too… what? He can’t even place the feeling. All he can do is feel it.

“It’s going to be okay,” says Larb softly. He steps toward Zim and, to Zim’s surprise, drops to one knee. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

The motion makes Zim’s spooch pump hard right in the middle of his throat. He can’t catch his breath, so he says nothing as Larb reaches up and lightly holds his upper arms.

“I’ve never heard you quiet for so long,” says Larb with a kind smile.

Zim huffs out a single, awkward laugh.

“I don’t know,” he says, truthfully. “I just… I…”

He trails off, nothing to add. Larb cocks his head to the side.

“I know that the human has been a companion to you,” says Larb. Zim opens his mouth to object, but Larb keeps talking. “It’s okay, don’t worry. I won’t tell our Tallest. But, he has to go, Zim. It’s for the best. It’s what we all need.”

Zim shuts his mouth, opens it again, shuts it again.

“Maybe you need it the most, hm? Maybe we just need to get this human out of the picture. Then, we can all move on.”

Zim drops his chin in a nod. Larb looks up at him, nothing but kindness in his eyes. Zim swallows.

Some dumb comment from the Dib a day or two ago rattles in his brain: “Do you let everyone boss you around, or is Larb a special case, because you’re clearly so desperate to fuck him?”

Zim blinks as he remembers it, just as shaken as he was when Dib said it the first time. 

He pauses, again, to think about it, despite how sick it makes him feel, how terrifying it would be for someone like Larb to do something like that — images of a life lived underground, nails digging into his shoulders, sharp spikes of pain — no. Larb would never do that to him. And Zim wasn’t… Zim isn’t desperate for that, and why would he be? Why would he want that again?

Why did he ever want it in the first place?

Larb is looking at him.

“Okay,” he says eventually. “You… you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking, it’s… it’s obviously for the best. You’re right.”

Larb stands swiftly and smiles at Zim. 

“It’s hard out here, in space, all by yourself. Even with Tak and Tenn, I’m sure it gets lonely. Especially with those two, maybe, hm?”

“Yeah,” says Zim.

“Well, you don’t have to worry for much longer. Soon, you’ll forget all about that human.”

“Okay,” says Zim.

A part of him wants to be angry, to argue back, to do something beyond just stand there and nod and agree. But, what could he say? That the human deserved to survive? That his months watching Zim, Tenn, and Tak wouldn’t compromise them later on? 

Somehow, it feels unlikely that Dib would use Zim’s sensitivity to salt against him. Not after all that time they’d spent together in med bay, right? Playing card games and falling asleep in the same bed and becoming… Zim doesn’t want to say it. The human isn’t his friend. And, if he knows about Irken salt allergies… if there’s even a _chance_ that Zim, Tenn, and Tak had somehow let it slip… Irkens that Zim once knew very well have been executed for far less. It makes sense to cut the loose ends. And, if it’s what the Tallest want, who is Zim to argue, anyway?

Larb gives him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Want to go grab a snack together?”

He starts off, and Zim doesn’t realize he’s being pulled along until he feels a tug. He looks down and sees that Larb’s hand is in his. His spooch begins to thud all over again, but the rage is gone. He stares at his and Larb’s intertwined hands all the way to the kitchen.

**iii.**

Dib lies in his bed, trying to sleep. The lights in the hallway are off, which makes him think that most of the irkens are sleeping. That, or the ship is in such bad shape that they need to keep the lights off to preserve energy. Probably the latter.

He hears the gentle _whoosh_ of the door opening, and he knows instantly that it’s Zim at the door, even if he can’t see. He can just tell, somehow. Zim comes in quietly, unassuming, not trying to make a big deal of his presence in Dib’s room. He sits on the edge of Dib’s bed and gently puts a hand on Dib’s shoulder.

Dib rolls over.

“What?” he murmurs, watching Zim’s bright eyes, the only light in the dark room.

“What are you doing?” Zim whispers back.

“Sleeping.”

Zim takes a deep breath and removes his hand from Dib’s shoulder.

“What is it?” asks Dib. “Are we there already?”

Zim says nothing.

“What’s wrong?” Dib presses.

Zim still says nothing, but his hand reaches for the high neck of Dib’s jacket. He’s been sleeping in it these past couple of nights — the ship has been colder than usual. He remembers Larb complaining that the ship was unfixable without the right parts. He wonders just how close they are to this hunk of trash completely falling apart.

“Why do you dress like this?” Zim asks.

“It’s just my uniform.”

“Why is it all black?”

“Why do you wear all pink?”

“I asked first.”

Dib shrugs off Zim’s touch. “It’s a cultural thing.”

“Explain.”

Dib sits up, unsteadily. “I can’t wait until this is over and I don’t have to wear these stupid handcuffs all the time,” he growls.

Zim makes a weird, short squeaking sound. 

“What?” asks Dib.

There’s a silence in the room for a few moments.

“What’s the cultural thing?”

“It’s… I don’t totally remember the details,” Dib admits. “Basically, we have a queen, and she’s in charge, and there used to be a king, but he died, so Iapetus wears black.”

“Oh,” says Zim. “All of Iapetus?”

“As far as I know, yeah,” says Dib. “It’s just… it’s like, it was a whole thing, how he died.”

“What do you mean?”

Dib really can’t remember — it was something paranormal, he remembered thinking. Like, unnatural. But, Aaro had told him so long ago, and it never really seemed to matter.

“It was just a big deal. And, usually, the queen would remarry, since we don’t… uh, Iapetus doesn’t have, like, just queens in charge. But she wanted to stay single in his honor, as his widow, I guess, so she rules on her own now.”

He thinks that’s a fair approximation. Despite how often he hails Sathana, he really barely thinks about her. He’d almost met her once, when Aaro first decided to take him in, but the plans fell through and then his life had been all about Aaro. Sathana lives on Iapetus, watching over her people. She makes laws and orders interventions, but she isn’t exactly a constant presence in the lives of the spacefaring iapetuns.

“I see,” says Zim quietly. “Don’t you ever miss wearing different colors?”

Dib shrugs. “I used to wear black a lot anyway, I think.”

“Not exclusively.”

“Whatever,” says Dib. “It’s not really something I think about.”

“Hm.”

“What about you?” asks Dib. “Don’t you get tired of just wearing pink?”

There’s a long silence.

“Sometimes,” Zim says, eventually.

Dib nods a little. He’s getting tired, and he doesn’t really know why Zim came in to ask him about his clothes, just as he was falling asleep.

“What will you do, after this is done?” Zim asks.

Dib shrugs. “Go back to work, I guess.”

“Doing what?”

“What?”

“What work do you do?”

“I’m a captain.”

“Yes, I know that,” says Zim, sounding annoyed. “What does your crew do? Are you a science vessel? Do you do research?”

“Uh,” says Dib quietly. “Not really.”

“What do you _do_ , then? What is the purpose of your ship?”

“I’m — it’s a military ship. We do… uh, military stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Why are you asking?”

“I’m just curious.”

Dib narrows his eyes. “Shouldn’t you know what I do? Weren’t you guys briefed before you snuck onto my ship?”

Zim says nothing.

“Oh, so you don’t know?”

Zim still says nothing.

Dib almost has to laugh. “Well, if your incredible Tallest won’t tell you why you were investigating me, _I’m_ not filling the in blanks for you. If you really want to know, just ask them.”

There’s another beat of awkward silence, where Dib feels, again, just so amazed by how horribly the Irken Empire is run. Seriously? The agents sneaking onto his ship didn’t even know what kind of vessel it was? How would they even complete the mission, if they didn’t know what they were looking for? He thinks about Tak's interrogation, right before Larb beamed onto the ship. Do they all really know _nothing_?

“Forget it,” says Zim quietly. “I was just asking.”

“I’m not helping you figure out why you were investigating me, sorry.”

“It wasn’t— that’s not—”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

Dib lays back down. “It would be laughable, how badly your whole Empire is run, if you guys weren’t the worst thing to happen to the cosmos since the dawn of time.”

“I don’t care what you think about us,” Zim mutters.

“Good,” says Dib, “because I think you’re a bunch of parasites — an invasive species that takes over everything it can get its hands on, sucks the marrow out of the bones of all of its victims, and then spits them out hollow.”

Zim stands.

“Eventually, the Irken Empire is going to fall apart. The fact that you haven’t yet is… sheer luck. But, the whole thing is going to come crashing down one day, and you’ll all deserve everything that you get.”

He isn’t sure why he’s saying it — Zim isn’t even arguing back. But Dib still feels a sourness in his stomach when he thinks of how quick Zim was to drop him for Larb — and it isn’t anything like jealousy, obviously, but it’s… it bugs him, is all. And if he wants to make Zim squirm for it, he should be allowed to, shouldn’t he?

And, besides, everything Dib is saying is true. If it feels less true when he says it to Zim, all that means is that he needs to get back to Aaro as soon as he possibly can.

“The Irken Empire will never fall.”

“I’m sure that’s what you’re programmed to believe,” says Dib, and he rolls onto his side, away from Zim. “Just like that stupid computer on your back programs you to only care about yourself and your stupid leaders and no one else.”

Zim stands there for a second, then, eventually, just walks out of the room, quiet, like he was never there.

**iii.**

“Okay,” says Larb, glancing around the room. “One for each of us, and we’ll be undetectable.”

Larb passes one out to Tenn and one to Tak: thin, metal bracelets each set with a small, pink button. He takes a moment to personally clasp Zim’s around his wrist, then gives his hand a squeeze. Tenn watches, saying nothing, a familiar prickling sensation crawling up her neck at the display, one of her antennae twitching backward.

She shakes the suspicion off, but her concern for Zim never wavers. 

“Press the button,” says Larb, pressing it as he does so and going completely invisible, “and you’re cloaked.”

Tenn, Zim, and Tak each press their own buttons, going invisible one by one.

Tak reappears. “Wow,” she says. “When did we start using these?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Larb, flippant. “I forget who we got the tech from.”

“You mean who you stole the tech from,” says Dib from his seat on the upper deck.

Larb’s entire body tenses, and he glares over his shoulder at the Dib for just a moment before turning back to the other irkens. 

“Let’s not forget the plan,” he says, and Tenn and Zim deactivate their bracelets. “We land outside the campus in an hour. The human goes in through the front entrance, and we scale the back side of the fence and climb the wall on the northern side of the main building. The vice admiral will be in the office on the top floor. When the human gives the signal, we jump through the window, grab the vice admiral, and… leave.”

Zim, Tenn, and Tak nod. 

“SIR,” says Larb, looking down to his robot. “Engage cloaking.”

“Yes, my Master,” chirps the SIR, and it disappears from sight.

Tenn passes around the communicators, keeping one for herself and handing one to Tak, Larb, and the human.

“I don’t get one?” Zim asks, a little petulant.

“We only had one spare,” says Tenn with a shrug.

“Just stick by me,” says Larb, giving Zim a little bump with his hip.

Zim smiles briefly at the contact, and Tenn feels a thousand warning signals go off inside her brain again. She forces herself to push the thought away — Larb would never, she tells herself, he’s nothing like those other irkens in the Dome, and Zim… she has to trust Zim, she reminds herself, because she might not always be there and Zim will need to learn how to fend for himself one of these days. And, besides, Larb isn’t Dib: he’s loyal to the Empire, and he would never hurt Zim, and he’s much to smart to do something that would blow her mission.

Tenn bristles at the thought because, really, it’s barely her mission anymore. Larb came in with new ideas, new tech, and an entire new plan, and all Tenn had done was stand by and let him steal the show. She bites her lip and glances at Tak, who catches her eye and gives her sly grin and a hip-bump of her own.

“Are we going?” asks the human grumpily.

“We land in a few minutes,” says Larb, shooting another glare at the human. 

“Great,” says the Dib. There’s a brief pause, and then his eyes slide to Zim. “If you’re missing a communicator, maybe someone should stay here. Watch the ship for when you guys come back with Lobo.”

“And who would do that?” asks Tak, hands on her hips, jumping to hostility in the blink of an eye.

Dib is still watching Zim. Zim narrows his eyes.

“What?” he asks.

Dib rolls his eyes a little, then takes a breath, like he regrets bringing it up. 

“I mean,” he says quietly, “you just got hurt, maybe—?”

“He’s fine,” says Larb.

“I’m fine,” Zim adds.

Dib looks down. “Just a suggestion.”

They land. Larb takes Dib’s handcuffs off and he rubs at his wrists, then takes a moment to stretch. 

“Let’s get going,” says Tenn, and Dib glares at her.

She doesn’t care. The sooner this human is dead, the sooner her mission will be done and her Tallest will praise her.

She eyes Larb. Larb wouldn’t get all the credit for _her_ mission, would he?

The SIR unit runs ahead to scope out their path, kicking up muck as it goes. They start off after it, trying to avoid the deeper puddles of thick, brown slime.

“This planet is disgusting,” says Tak.

“Don’t look at me,” says the Dib. “I’m not the one who wanted us to come here.”

“You weren’t the one who wanted us to come to the _correct_ location, you mean,” hisses Larb.  


“Well, whoever this informant of yours is must know more than _me_ , which is a little unfathomable, actually—”

“I’m sure it is, for _you_.”

“Can you stop?” Zim snaps.

Tenn stops for a moment and peeks behind her. Zim is bringing up the rear, looking fine, mostly, a pained expression on his face. Larb huffs and carries on, and Tenn follows him. Her antennae twitch, and she hears the conversation behind her, quiet and low.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” the Dib whispers. 

“Shut up,” Zim hisses back. “I don’t need you fretting over me.”

“But, maybe—”

Zim grunts and stomps ahead, then squeezes himself between Tenn and Tak. They say nothing, even as Tak reaches up and tweaks Zim’s antennae and Zim gives her a vicious bite on the shoulder.

They’re close. The irkens cloak and follow Dib through the swampy, smelling wetlands until they finally reach a huge, cement gate.

Dib walks up to the gate without looking to any of them, purposeful, his strides powerful, like he’s some kind of Tallest. Tenn watches him go and muses that this is the last time she’ll see him before she kills him.

He reaches the gate, and approaches what looks like a speaker. 

“Hail Sathana,” he says.

“Hail our glorious mother,” comes the response.

Tenn overhears the sound of him identifying himself and then hastily being welcomed to the campus.

The gates open, and the Dib disappears into the facility.

“Let’s go,” says Larb quietly.

They sneak around the wall and meet Larb’s SIR at the back. Tenn’s PAK’s tracking capabilities, which can locate irkens within a certain distance, inform her that Tak, Larb, and Zim are standing beside her, even if she can’t see them.

“Our informant says we should be able to scale the wall and get over without detection,” says Larb, and Tenn can’t help but think, _really_? No detection?

She doesn’t say anything, though, just listens through her communicator as other iapetuns direct Dib to the administrative building, to Lobo’s room, which, she admits, is exactly where Larb said it would be.

Maybe this informant was right. And, besides, who was Tenn to question them?

The SIR hops over the wall and then sends a message to Larb’s PAK that it’s clear to come over. They scale the wall, and Tenn notes with some relief that Zim doesn’t have a problem using his PAK legs or getting up the smooth barrier. She knows he’s fine — he’s been fine for a while now. But something about being back out in the field makes her nervous for him, and she can’t help but think about that day on Salt.

They hop over the barrier and land. Tenn gets a look around.

The Iapetun research campus looks nothing like an Irken facility. Irken buildings are aesthetically pleasing: bright colors, lots of tubing, lots of curves and asymmetry. Iapetun architecture is… gray. Boring. Rectangular buildings with sharp edges and small windows that all together looks very, very, dull. 

Tak bumps her hip again. “What a dump,” she whispers.

“I was just thinking that,” Tenn whispers back.

They stay close to the inner perimeter as they follow Larb’s SIR around the campus. Tenn eyes the iapetuns around her. They’re tall, like most iapetuns are, and they all wear long, sweeping black coats. It’s unnerving, seeing them all, their skin and hair varying shades of grey. If Tenn didn’t know any better — if she couldn’t still see the brown muck beneath her own feet — she would think that her ocular implants were malfunctioning and failing to recognize color. 

They near the tall, pale administrative building. They pause.

She can hear the sound of Dib making his way through the building. All the _Hail Sathana_ s as he comes and goes begin to wear on her. And the Dib judges them for their loyalty to their Tallest? Every time he turns around, he hails that queen, that… mother, whatever that is — of his.

“I’m looking for Vice Admiral Lobo’s office,” says Dib.

She overhears the response, fifth door on the right, and that’s enough for her. They scale the building quickly and quietly and wait below the window.

The window is cracked, and she can’t hear anything inside. Then, she hears a knock.

There’s no response.

Another knock.

No response.

Another knock, and then she hears the door open.

“Lobo?” asks Dib. “Are you in here?”

There’s nothing but silence as the door quickly shuts. 

She can’t help it, so she peeks. 

As she lifts her head over the window pane, the Dib human, standing in the middle of the room, his face as colorless an an iapetun’s, comes in to view. 

An alarm blares.

Then, from what sounds like a hundred speakers, Tenn hears: “ _Your attention, please. Irken intruders have been detected. Please remain calm and stay where you are. This is a lockdown. Thank you_.” 

The campus erupts with confusion and panic, and more alarms begin to blare, so loudly that Tenn can barely hear herself think. 

“What’s happening?” she hisses. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t hear you,” Dib whispers, hoarse. “The communicator—”

“ _What is going on_?” she snaps. 

“It’s too loud, I can’t—”

Tenn grunts, then reaches up and slides the window up enough that she can slip through. She senses as Larb, his SIR, Tak, and Zim follow her. She slams the window shut and ducks below it. The blaring, still loud, is more bearable with the window closed.

“Stay cloaked,” she says, glaring in the direction of her teammates, even if she knows they can’t see her.

Dib is still standing in the middle of the room, looking sick.

“I don’t know what happened,” he says. “Everyone told me he was here!”

“You tricked us!” barks Tak. “You set us up, you vile, horrible creature, I knew we never should have trusted you!”

“I didn’t even want to _come_ here! We weren’t even going to do this until Larb—”

The pounding of footsteps stops Dib in his tracks. 

“Shit,” he says. “Go back out the window.”

“What, so they can shoot us from the ground?” barks Larb. 

The door bangs open, and Dib nearly falls forward in shock. Tenn watches in horror as five armed iapetuns burst into the room.

“Step aside, Captain!” one of them shouts.

Dib does, and they hold their weapons aloft.

“Surrender, irken scum, we know you’re in here.”

“Shit,” says Larb. “SIR, attack mode.”

“Yes, my master!”

Larb’s SIR, still invisible, makes easy work of taking the guards out.

“We have to get out of here!” says Tak.

Tenn can sense that she’s rising, grabbing for Zim, and pulling him out from behind the empty desk.

“SIR,” says Larb, “find us a way out.”

The SIR says nothing for a moment, then: “All exits blocked, master.”

“What about out the window?”

“Several aliens pointing weapons at the window, master,” says the SIR, and Tenn’s blood boils when Dib crouches down to avoid — what? Getting shot? As if this entire operation wasn’t just a way save him and trick the rest of them?

She moves before she thinks and, before she knows it, she’s pinning the Dib to the floor and wrapping her hands around his neck.

“Get us out of here, or I’ll kill you now!” she barks.

The Dib nods, waving his hands in the air and grabbing for her wrists. “Oh— okay! Okay! Let me go!”

She does.

“More aliens approaching, master.” 

“What do we do?” asks Tak.

Dib pulls himself up, staggering a little as he does. “Follow me.”

“No!” shouts Larb. “We won’t—”

“Just do it!” Dib shouts back. “Come on! And don’t let them run into you!”

He bursts out of the room and Tenn overhears him shout that they were in the office and trying to go back out the window. She hears the thudding of footsteps coming toward her.

“The ceiling,” she whispers. “Now!”

Larb, Tak, and Zim leap to the ceiling and use their PAK legs to crawl along it. They leave the office just as more officers come in and begin to open fire.

Dib is standing in the hallway, pointing more and more guards toward the office. Momentarily, he looks up in their direction. He pales, and his eyes go wide.

One of the guards follows Dib’s gaze, then points to the ceiling.

“Bootprints! They’re on the ceiling! Take them out!”

Tenn turns, a quick fury unfurling as she looks for whose boots are muddying the ceiling when she realizes. It’s hers.

She drops to the ground and slides around the guards as they begin shooting — not the kind of gunfire she’s used to, but primitive metal bullets that fly at a rapid pace at Tak, Larb, and Zim. She turns and silently begs her teammates to follow her, and she can sense as Larb and Tak scamper around the gunfire and try to get to her. Zim pauses, and then he’s too late, and a smattering of bullets puncture his torso. Dark blood begins spurting from where he’s hidden on the ceiling, and the more the guards shoot at him, the more visible he is as they paint him purple with his own blood. He drops to the floor and she can see him crawling toward them, but he’s too visible, there’s too much—

“Hey!” she hears, loud and clear over the gunfire. “Stop!”

She and the guards turn, and there stands Larb, uncloaked, standing up on his spider legs behind a terrified Dib, one arm around Dib’s neck, three PAK lasers pointed at the guards and the other digging into Dib’s abdomen.

“Take another shot and the captain dies,” says Larb.

One of the guards begins to point his weapon toward Larb and Dib, but another stops him, grabbing the gun and pointing it toward the ground.

“Get him,” says Larb, eyes still glued to the guards.

Tenn and Tak step around the guards to where the patchwork outline of Zim’s form lies prone on the floor. They scoop him up gently, one of his arms around each of their shoulders, and Tenn feels her eyes well up with tears as she watches her boots leave mud prints on the carpet alongside Zim’s bloodstains.

They make their way to Larb, and he begins backing himself and Dib toward the staircaseat the end of the hall. 

Just as they reach the doorway, Larb’s SIR chirps, “ _MASTER!_ ” 

The door flies open, and a huge, familiar form fills the doorway.

“Hey, kid.”

Dib struggles to look over his shoulder, and Tenn watches as the realization dawns.

“Lobo,” he chokes out, somehow looking even more terrified, despite the PAK leg that's been digging into his side.

“You’re in a lotta trouble, you know that?”

“Don’t come any closer!” Larb barks, turning them so that his back is against the wall of the hallway and he can spot at Lobo and the guards at the other end of the hall. “I’ll kill him!” 

“I don’t doubt that,” says Lobo. “Just hand him over, and you can go.”

“I don’t believe you, Vice Admiral,” snarls Larb. 

“Look, I’ll even let your friend get a head start,” says Lobo, gesturing toward Tak, Tenn, and Zim, Zim’s blood still dripping onto the floor as his head droops to his chest and he finally loses consciousness. “It can just be you and me.”

“Get Zim out of here,” Tenn whispers. “I’ll stay.”

“Okay,” whispers Tak, and she carefully adjusts so that she’s holding Zim on her own. 

Lobo shifts to the side as Tak and Zim move through the doorway and start heading down the stairs. She can just barely hear Zim’s labored breathing as they disappear.

“You too, muddy shoes,” says Lobo. “Go on.”

Tenn freezes. 

“Go on, then,” Lobo repeats, a mean smile on his face. “Don’t just stand there.”

Tenn complies, stepping carefully around Lobo. She feels his eyes on her as she goes, and her spooch freezes in her chest under his gaze. 

Something about the iapetun — his mean grin, his narrowed eyes, the severe cut of his jaw — it terrifies her. She looks at Dib for a moment, whose eyes, still filled with fear, haven’t left Lobo. She can see that his hands are shaking. She can hear his pulse pounding.

She can sense Tak taking Zim down the stairs, and, if she strains her ears, she can hear her whispering to him. She deploys her PAK legs and leaps to the ceiling again, this time careful to keep her boots from touching anything.

“Let go of our boy and you can go, too,” says Lobo.

Larb is watching him, his expression cool. “Of course,” he says carefully. His gaze slips from Lobo’s for a moment to an empty spot on the floor. He looks back at Lobo and gestures toward him with a tilt of his head. “He’s all yours, SIR.”

“Good,” says Lobo, “now why don’t you—”

From seemingly nowhere, a blast of energy knocks Lobo backward. Lobo flies into the wall with a shocked grunt, then slumps to the floor, unconscious.

Larb flings Dib toward the guards, lifts Lobo, and starts to run.

“Show no mercy, SIR!” he shouts as he ducks for the stairwell.

Tenn drops back to the floor to help Larb carry the vice admiral down the stairs. The SIR begins blasting, and the force of its firepower shakes the building

“Tak, where are you?” she shouts. “We’re coming with the vice admiral!”

“We can’t—” Tak begins, and Tenn gets to the bottom of the staircase just in time to see a horde of soldiers holding them at gunpoint just outside the building.

“Let us go!” Larb roars, still the only one entirely visible. “Let us go and we won’t kill him!”

The guards pause, their eyes drifting from Lobo to Larb and back. 

One of the guards standing near the front of the group points her weapon downwards. 

“Go,” she says. “We cannot risk the vice admiral’s life.”

“Sure, you can’t,” says Larb, and they start to move for the exit, Tak still holding Zim, Tenn and Larb still carrying Lobo.

They’re making their way out of the campus when Lobo shifts a little in Tenn’s hold, and she hears a strange clanking sound, like metal on metal. It doesn’t affect her, but Larb stumbles.

“What’s wrong?” Tenn whispers, staggering a little as he drops the weight of the vice admiral.

“I…” Larb says nothing for a moment, then drops to his knees.

“Larb,” Tak grunts. “Get up.”

“I… I can’t, I—”

Larb tries to stand and can’t, and Tenn is so focused on Larb that she doesn’t feel the vice admiral slip from her grip.

“Doesn’t feel too good, does it?” she hears, and she turns to see Lobo, on his hands and knees, watching Larb. “Betcha weren’t expecting that.”

Larb is gasping now, clutching his chest. 

“What’s happening?” Tenn shouts. “Larb, what’s wrong?”

She drops to her knees and—

“Take them!” she hears, and she looks up and Lobo is scrambling away, into the arms of one of the guards, and now it was just the four of them, in the middle of the campus, surrounded.

“SIR,” Larb wheezes, “SIR, help us.”

There’s no response, only the sounds of more guards sprinting toward them, the alarm blaring louder than ever, shouts and the sounds of their weapons discharging ringing in her antennae and, and—

“Let us _go_!” she hears, and she turns to where Tak is standing, only visible where her front stained with Zim’s blood. 

She can hear the sound of Tak’s PAK whirring, and then a hundred PAK lasers begin firing off at once.

The detonations — big, powerful, blinding explosions — are enough to eliminate at least half of the guards approaching them. Tenn scoops Larb up and starts running, and she can hear Tak right next to her, running alongside her, Zim in her arms.

They make it to the front gate, heavily guarded, and pause. The guards aim their weapons at them all, and she can feel Larb clutching her shoulder, gasping into her antennae, and the remaining guards prepare to fire.

“Stop!” she hears.

She turns and freezes.

The Dib-creature is sprinting toward them, hands waving, stumbling a great deal, looking like he’d just barely survived Larb’s SIR’s attack.

The Dib makes it to them, and he stands between them and the guards, a living shield.

“Let them get through,” he says. 

The guards stare at Dib for a moment, then look around. Tenn does, too. She can’t see Lobo. Tak’s attack left the air thick with smoke. She doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive at this point, and it hits her. 

They’re going to be lucky if they get out of here alive.

She failed.

She’s going to have to tell her Tallest that she failed.

“Captain,” says one of the guards. “We have been ordered by the vice admiral to—”

“The vice admiral is compromised,” says Dib, spreading his arms wide. “The plan changed. Open the gate and let them through.”

The guards watch him, eyes wide, but eventually they comply. They move aside and the gate opens, and Dib leads them through. They follow, saying nothing. When they get through the gate, Dib orders it shut, and the guards again comply, their expressions still confused. 

When the gate closes, Dib turns to face them.

“We need to get out of here,” he says. “If Lobo’s still alive, he’s going to wake up and send them after us, and I won’t be able to stop them. Come on.”

They make their way back through the mud, and Tenn’s eyes well up at the squelching sound that her boots make as she trudges through the muck.

They’re almost at the ship when Larb begins to squirm weakly in her arms.

“Put… put me down.”

“We’re almost there—” she begins.

“Now,” says Larb, his voice weak. “They did something— put me down, now, my PAK…”

Tenn complies, dropping to her knees and placing Larb gently on the ground. She deactivates her cloaking bracelet and helps Larb sit up, then goes behind him to examine his PAK. Her eyes go wide.

There’s something on it — round, metal, almost the size of her palm. She touches it, tries to remove it, and Larb gasps. 

“What is it?” he asks.

“It’s—”

“What’s going on?”

Tenn looks up, and Dib is standing over her. She can see Tak standing quietly off to the side, now almost visible, covered in soot, mud, and Zim’s blood.

The Dib frowns. “We have to get out of here, we can’t—”

“Something’s wrong,” says Tenn.

Dib moves toward them, and Tenn has half a mind to pull away. But, if anyone knows what this is or how to disable it, it’s the Dib.

“What is it?” she asks as he touches the device. Her voice wavers as she asks, “What’s it doing to him?”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” says the Dib. She looks at him, hard, and he shakes his head. “I really don’t know,” he says, his voice a little hoarse. “I’ve never seen this before.”

Larb looks pale, sickly, his breathing labored and his antennae twitching.

Tak deactivates her bracelet and reappears next to her, and Tenn can hear the sound of her PAK whirring. A tube appears from the top of her PAK. She’s about to attach her PAK to Larb’s to give him some energy. Tenn stops her.

“We don’t know what this is,” she says. “It could hurt you, too.”

“Then what do we do?!” Tak snaps. “Look at him, it’s… it’s draining him!”

Larb is limp against Tenn’s front. His head lolls back onto her shoulder.

He groans weakly, “SIR… where’s my SIR?”

Tenn looks around. She isn’t sure, she didn’t… she can’t remember if Larb’s SIR made it out of the administrative building.

“We need— we need to get him to med bay,” says Tenn. “He needs to go, now. Come on, Larb—”

Larb puts a hand on her shoulder, then gently scoots himself onto the ground so that his head is on her thighs. “Just… just let me lie down,” he says.

“Larb, don’t, come on, we’re not far—”

“Just… where is Zim?” croaks Larb, and Tenn can see, he’s fading so fast, and her eyes fill with tears again.

“Larb,” she says, softly, her voice shaking. “Larb, please, let us take you to med bay. We can hook you up, we can reactivate you—”

“My PAK,” says Larb softly. “It’s… you can’t. It isn’t just the energy, it’s the whole system.”

“What?” asks Tak, her voice shaking as much as Tenn’s.

“It’s a virus,” says Larb.

Tenn and Tak stare at him for a moment in shocked silence. Larb just blinks at them, his eyes half closed.

“Where is Zim?” he asks again.

Tak reaches behind her and feels around, then, Zim comes into view, still unconscious, sprawled on the ground. Tenn hears her rousing him, waking him up, and he sits up, gripping his abdomen and groaning.

“Did we get him?” he asks stiffly.

“Zim,” says Tak softly, and Tenn watches as the tears begin to fall down Tak’s face, her eyes never leaving Zim.

Zim stares at her, confused. “What?”

He follows Tak’s gaze as she turns to look at Larb’s prone form, and he scrambles over until he’s next to Tak, leaning over Larb. 

“Larb!” he shouts. He grabs for one of Larb’s hands. “What’s happening? What’s wrong? We need to go to med bay!”

“Zim,” says Larb softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? What happened, what did they do to you?” Zim’s voice gets louder, and he begins to cry, too, tears bursting from his eyes.

Larb brings Zim’s hand toward his face and presses the back of it to his cheek. “I missed you so much.”

Zim watches him for a moment, his face flushed and stained with streaks of dirt and ash. 

“Then stay,” he whispers. “Stay with me, we can— we can get you to med bay.”

“There’s no use in any of that,” says Larb softly. “I can feel it, it’s… it’s all shutting down.”

“We can fix it,” sobs Zim. “Let me try to fix it, we can reactivate you, we can get you another PAK…”

Larb’s breathing is getting even more unsteady, and Tenn watches and knows that none of that will matter. If Larb’s PAK is really infected, no one will want to touch it. Even if it were salvageable, it wouldn’t matter. It would be labeled as “defective” and destroyed. No one — not even their Almighty Tallest — was worth potentially infecting the Control Brains with a sick PAK.

There was nothing they could do. 

“I’m so sorry, Zim,” says Larb softly.

“No, no, Larb.” Zim weeps, his tears flowing and his entire body shaking. “Please don’t do this. This can’t be happening.”

Larb closes his eyes, his hands clasped in Zim’s and Tak’s, his head resting in Tenn’s lap. Zim begs him not to go as he dies, his PAK shutting down slowly, agonizingly. Eventually, his breathing stops. His signal disappears from her PAK’s tracking function.

Zim wails and throws himself on Larb’s body. Tak, next to him, breaks down into tears, covering her face with her hand and sobbing.

Tenn watches them weep as her spooch pounds in her chest, a millions thoughts raging in her head at once: _The mission was a failure. My Tallest will never forgive me for losing Larb. This is all my fault._

_This is all my fault._

A tear drops onto Larb’s forehead. Tenn stares at is as it slides down Larb’s face, along between his eyes, and over his cheek until it finally drips into the mud. The sounds of wailing fills the marsh around them. Tenn squeezes her eyes shut.

They need to go.

For all she knows, there are iapetuns tracking them right now. And they won’t be difficult to find.

Tenn swallows, then opens her eyes and looks over her shoulder at the Dib.

He looks nothing like the person she first met on his ship. He looks scared, and sick, and horrified. He looks like how he looked when Larb was about to give him up to Lobo.

Something about that — Tenn can’t quite explain it — but something about that fear that she saw in the Dib’s face makes her trust him, just for now, and, maybe, because she has no other choice.

“Get them out of here,” she says, her voice almost steady.

The Dib meets her eyes. “What?”

“Get them back to the ship. We need to move.”

“What about you?”

Tenn looks back into Larb’s face. “I’ll catch up in a second. Just… just get them away from here. They don’t need to see this.”

Dib clearly doesn’t understand, but he puts a hand on Tak’s shoulder and urges her to get moving. She meets Tenn’s eyes and nods, and Tenn’s entire being crumbles into pieces. Tak gently pulls Zim off of Larb’s body, and the two of them, hand in hand, follow the Dib back to the ship.

When Tenn is sure that they’re out of sight, she reaches for Larb’s right arm and turns it so that the sensitive inside of his wrist is facing upward. The self-destruct button appears, bright and red on his sleeve — the last command his PAK made before shutting down. Tenn closes her eyes and presses the button.

It’s something she’s seen before, and it’s not entirely pleasant. The rapid disintegration of both irken and PAK ensures that no one will ever find Larb’s body, break into his PAK, learn any of Irk’s secrets. Everything Larb ever did, everything he ever was, could still be stored, somewhere, in that PAK. This close to an Iapetun base, it would be stupid of Tenn not to destroy any evidence that Larb ever existed.

She feels the weight of Larb’s head lift off of her lap. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter.

She opens her eyes when she’s sure it’s over, and, sure enough, there isn’t a trace of him left.

She stands, says a silent goodbye, and turns back toward the ship.

**iv.**

Dib waits in the cockpit. 

His entire body is in more pain then he’s ever felt in his life. Larb’s SIR took out the entire building, and Dib, by some miracle, was able to get past the guards and get out alive. He can barely stand, but he does.

When he brought Zim and Tak back into the ship, still weeping in each other’s arms, they disappeared. Probably for some privacy in their bunks.

He’s sure Tenn will be back soon, although, he doesn’t really know what she’s doing. He doesn’t really want to think of it.

He hadn’t been lying. He’d never heard of a device that stuck onto an irken’s PAK and corrupted it so badly that there was nothing left. It sends chills down his spine, and he can’t help but wonder: had Aaro known? 

Of course Aaro knows about this. But, then, why had he never told Dib?

Dib tries to come to some conclusion, but he can’t. His mind is frazzled, and he’s exhausted, and he can’t stop thinking about Lobo, that expression on his face, like he was going to rip Dib’s soul from his body.

Not unlike what Lobo had apparently just done to Larb.

Dib understands it — he really does. It’s just… difficult, is all, and he has to keep reminding himself that just because he’s met a few irkens, learned their names, it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve what’s coming to them. They’re violent, and cruel, and Larb had been openly hostile to Dib since the second he came aboard.

Somehow, the hostility is difficult to remember. All he can see are Tak and Zim’s weeping faces.

Maybe Dib hadn’t really thought that the iapetuns would do that. It seemed more like an Irken thing to do — biological warfare. Maybe Dib had always imagined that Iapetus was a peaceful planet, with a mission solely of helping those in need. But, Dib knows that the best way to help Vort and Boodie Nen and all those places is to go for Irk’s throat, to take it out so that it can’t hurt anyone else.

What happened to Larb, though… that slow, agonizing death… it didn’t feel like it fit in the Iapetun ideology. It didn’t feel right.

He hears the sound of the door opening behind him and turns around. It’s Tenn.

She approaches, sits in the pilot’s seat, and starts the ship up.

“They’re in their bunks, I think,” says Dib, even though she didn’t ask.

Tenn doesn’t respond. They lift off, exit the atmosphere, fly into space, all in silence.

“I know why you did it,” says Tenn, her voice flat and quiet.

“What?”

“I know why you rescued us.”

Dib blinks. He can’t say anything. Somehow, he doesn’t see this conversation ending in thanks.

“You are afraid of the vice admiral.”

“I… I—”

“Do not suspect that any of us will assume that you did that for the sake of being good to us.”

“I didn’t,” says Dib quickly. “I don’t.”

“Good,” says Tenn.

There’s another pause. Dib doesn't want to think about Lobo, about how much he'd been relying on the deal working out because... she's right. He's terrified of Lobo. After all this, Lobo might actually kill him, if Aaro's angry enough to let him. He's about to hobble off to the bathroom to take a shower — his wrists are still un-cuffed, and he’ll take advantage of that until someone remembers — but then, Tenn speaks again.

“I know what you think of us,” says Tenn. “That we are just organic bodies following the orders of our PAKs. That we only care about ourselves and pleasing our Tallest.”

The words are too similar to what Dib had just said to Zim the night before for it to be a coincidence. He swallows. 

“You might not care, but this war takes a toll on us, too,” says Tenn, so quietly that Dib’s ears strain. “You have no idea of the things we give up, the things we lose.”


End file.
